Open Access

ARTICLE

Instability Analysis of Strike-Slip Fault Based on Cusp Catastrophe Model

Zaitie Chen^1,*, Wei Wang², Dayang Li³

1 Shazhou Institute of Technology, Zhangjiagang 215600, China .
2 Yangzhou Vocational College, Yangzhou 225009, China.
3 Department of Engineering Mechanics, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China.

* Corresponding author: Zaitie Chen. Email: .

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2018, 12(1), 19-33. https://doi.org/10.3970/sdhm.2018.012.019

Abstract

The distribution of many active faults in western China is an important reason for the frequent earthquakes. With the rapid development of the western region, many major projects have been built there and the existence of active faults is bound to have an influence on the safety of the engineering structure. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the mechanism of fault slip instability for evaluating the geological stability of the region and for the site selection of major projects. In this paper, cusp catastrophe theory is used to establish a cusp catastrophe model with general softened form of strike-slip faults on the basis of strike-slip faults. In this model, the influence of the softening property of fault zone on fault instability is considered. Based on this model, the conditions of slip instability of strike-slip faults are derived and further the half-slip distance, far-field displacement and energy release equation of sliding-slip fault are revealed. The influences of the system stiffness ratio and the softening property of the fault zone on the half-wave displacement, the far-field displacement and the energy release are shown. Which lays a good foundation for further research on active fault-induced earthquake mechanism.

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