J. S Tchalenko

Bio: J. S Tchalenko is an academic researcher from Imperial College London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Fault (geology) & Shear zone. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 3 publications receiving 1404 citations.

Similarities between Shear Zones of Different Magnitudes

Abstract: An examination is made of the formation and development of shear zone structures on (1) the microscopic scale in the shear box test, (2) an intermediate scale in the Riedel experiment, and (3) the regional scale in the earthquake fault. On the basis of the resistance to shear, three structural stages are chosen for detailed study: the peak structure occurring at peak shearing resistance, the post-peak structure occurring after peak shearing resistance, and the residual structure occurring at residual shearing resistance. Most of the similarities in structure between the different scales at each of these stages are interpreted in terms of the mechanical properties of the material, the Coulomb failure criterion, and the kinematic restraints inherent in the type of deformation. Other similarities which are not as yet understood are described and suggested as topics for future research.

Structural Analysis of the Dasht-e Bayaz (Iran) Earthquake Fractures

Abstract: A structural analysis is presented of the fractures formed in the fault zone associated with the Dasht-e Bayaz earthquake of August 31, 1968. The segment of the fault zone studied in detail here is 25 km long, 2 to 3 km wide, and located in the Quaternary sediments of the Nimbluk Valley. The maximum relative displacements ohserved in the fault zone (up to 450 cm left-lateral and 250 cm vertical) are concentrated in an east-west principal displacement zone 2 to 100 m wide. This zone is in turn, on a larger scale, composed of en echelon shear zones. The fault zone contains also many small fracturesdispersed throughout the area and reflecting, to a certain extent, the dominant trends of the principal displacement zone. Both on the scale of the whole fault zone and on the larger scale of the principal displacement zone, the structures are characteristic of a simple shear type of deformation. Their sense of movement and initial directions can be interpreted in terms of the Coulomb failure criterion applied to a material with an angle of shearing resistance of 35 to 40. The analysis also shows that the Nimbluk Valley contains many fault lineaments that extend into the mountains around the valley- In many places the cast-west principal displacement zone follows very precisely one of these lineaments. Evidence of fault reactivation is also found on another important lineament that crosses the principal displacement zone in a WNW-ESE direction. The earthquake fracture pattern in the Nimbluk Valley is compatible with a predominant movement along the east-west lineament, followed by stress readjustments along the WNW-ESE lineament.

Dasht-e Baȳaz Fault, Iran: Earthquake and Earlier Related Structures in Bed Rock

Abstract: An 18-km-long segment of bed rock of the Dasht-e Baȳaz earthquake fault was studied in detail to define the 1968 earthquake-related and earlier tectonic deformations. Ground displacements that accompanied the earthquake coincided precisely with the pre-existing east-trending fault trace. Maximum components of offset were 4 m left-lateral and 1 m south side relatively down. The bedrock displacement occurred along new tension fractures that strike on average at 50°, as well as along reactivated pre-existing structures. Earlier tectonic deformation also produced tension fractures (post-Pliocene), conjugate shears (Pliocene), and tension joints (pre-Pliocene), and all are consistent with 47° to 55° tectonic compression. The study covered three points: (1) the 40° to 45° angle measured between the major principal stress direction indicated by the earthquake fractures and the fault; (2) the apparent constancy of the stress field direction during the three early phases and the 1968 deformation; and (3) the “gap” and “anti-Riedel” structure shown by the overall fault trace, which, we suggest, are characteristic of situations of kinematic restraint and are associated with a nonuniformly propagating rupture.

New Empirical Relationships among Magnitude, Rupture Length, Rupture Width, Rupture Area, and Surface Displacement

Abstract: Source parameters for historical earthquakes worldwide are compiled to develop a series of empirical relationships among moment magnitude ( M ), surface rupture length, subsurface rupture length, downdip rupture width, rupture area, and maximum and average displacement per event. The resulting data base is a significant update of previous compilations and includes the additional source parameters of seismic moment, moment magnitude, subsurface rupture length, downdip rupture width, and average surface displacement. Each source parameter is classified as reliable or unreliable, based on our evaluation of the accuracy of individual values. Only the reliable source parameters are used in the final analyses. In comparing source parameters, we note the following trends: (1) Generally, the length of rupture at the surface is equal to 75% of the subsurface rupture length; however, the ratio of surface rupture length to subsurface rupture length increases with magnitude; (2) the average surface displacement per event is about one-half the maximum surface displacement per event; and (3) the average subsurface displacement on the fault plane is less than the maximum surface displacement but more than the average surface displacement. Thus, for most earthquakes in this data base, slip on the fault plane at seismogenic depths is manifested by similar displacements at the surface. Log-linear regressions between earthquake magnitude and surface rupture length, subsurface rupture length, and rupture area are especially well correlated, showing standard deviations of 0.25 to 0.35 magnitude units. Most relationships are not statistically different (at a 95% significance level) as a function of the style of faulting: thus, we consider the regressions for all slip types to be appropriate for most applications. Regressions between magnitude and displacement, magnitude and rupture width, and between displacement and rupture length are less well correlated and have larger standard deviation than regressions between magnitude and length or area. The large number of data points in most of these regressions and their statistical stability suggest that they are unlikely to change significantly in response to additional data. Separating the data according to extensional and compressional tectonic environments neither provides statistically different results nor improves the statistical significance of the regressions. Regressions for cases in which earthquake magnitude is either the independent or the dependent parameter can be used to estimate maximum earthquake magnitudes both for surface faults and for subsurface seismic sources such as blind faults, and to estimate the expected surface displacement along a fault for a given size earthquake.

The Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting

Abstract: This essential reference for graduate students and researchers provides a unified treatment of earthquakes and faulting as two aspects of brittle tectonics at different timescales. The intimate connection between the two is manifested in their scaling laws and populations, which evolve from fracture growth and interactions between fractures. The connection between faults and the seismicity generated is governed by the rate and state dependent friction laws - producing distinctive seismic styles of faulting and a gamut of earthquake phenomena including aftershocks, afterslip, earthquake triggering, and slow slip events. The third edition of this classic treatise presents a wealth of new topics and new observations. These include slow earthquake phenomena; friction of phyllosilicates, and at high sliding velocities; fault structures; relative roles of strong and seismogenic versus weak and creeping faults; dynamic triggering of earthquakes; oceanic earthquakes; megathrust earthquakes in subduction zones; deep earthquakes; and new observations of earthquake precursory phenomena.

Strike-Slip faults

Abstract: The importance of strike-slip faulting was recognized near the turn of the century, chiefly from investigations of surficial offsets associated with major earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan, and California. Extrapolation from observed horizontal displacements during single earthquakes to more abstract concepts of long-term, slow accumulation of hundreds of kilometers of horizontal translation over geologic time, however, came almost simultaneously from several parts of the world, but only after much regional geologic mapping and synthesis. Strike-slip faults are classified either as transform faults which cut the lithosphere as plate boundaries, or as transcurrent faults which are confined to the crust. Each class of faults may be subdivided further according to their plate or intraplate tectonic function. A mechanical understanding of strike-slip faults has grown out of laboratory model studies which give a theoretical basis to relate faulting to concepts of pure shear or simple shear. Conjugate sets of strike-slip faults form in pure shear, typically across the strike of a convergent orogenic belt. Fault lengths are generally less than 100 km, and displacements along them are measurable in a few to tens of kilometers. Major strike-slip faults form in regional belts of simple shear, typically parallel to orogenic belts; indeed, recognition of the role strike-slip faults play in ancient orogenic belts is becoming increasingly commonplace as regional mapping becomes more detailed and complete. The lengths and displacements of the great strike-slip faults range in the hundreds of kilometers. The position and orientation of associated folds, local domains of extension and shortening, and related fractures and faults depend on the bending or stepping geometry of the strike-slip fault or fault zone, and thus the degree of convergent or divergent strike-slip. Elongate basins, ranging from sag ponds to rhombochasms, form as result of extension in domains of divergent strike slip such as releasing bends; pull-apart basins evolve between overstepping strike-slip faults. The arrangement of strike-slip faults which bound basins is tulip-shaped in profiles normal to strike. Elongate uplifts, ranging from pressure ridges to long, low hills or small mountain ranges, form as a result of crustal shortening in zones of convergent strike slip; they are bounded by an arrangement of strike-slip faults having the profile of a palm tree. Paleoseismic investigations imply that earthquakes occur more frequently on strike-slip faults than on intraplate normal and reverse faults. Active strike-slip faults also differ from other types of faults in that they evince fault creep, which is largely a surficial phenomenon driven by elastic loading of the crust at seismogenic depths. Creep may be steady state or episodic, pre-seismic, co-seismic, or post-seismic, depending on the constitutive properties of the fault zone and the nature of the static strain field, among a number of other factors which are incompletely understood. Recent studies have identified relations between strike-slip faults and crustal delamination at or near the seismogenic zone, giving a mechanism for regional rotation and translation of crustal slabs and flakes, but how general and widespread are these phenomena, and how the mechanisms operate that drive these detachment tectonics are questions that require additional observations, data, and modeling. Several fundamental problems remain poorly understood, including the nature of formation of en echelon folds and their relation to strike-slip faulting; the effect of mechanical stratigraphy on strike-slip-fault structural styles; the thermal and stress states along transform plate boundaries; and the discrepancy between recent geological and historical fault-slip rates relative to more rapid rates of slip determined from analyses of sea-floor magnetic anomalies. Many of the concepts and problems concerning strike-slip faults are derived from nearly a century of study of the San Andreas fault and have added much information, but solutions to several remaining and new fundamental problems will come when more attention is focused on other, less well studied strike-slip faults.

Active tectonics of the Alpine—Himalayan Belt between western Turkey and Pakistan

Abstract: Summary. Over 80 new fault plane solutions, combined with satellite imagery as well as both modern and historical observations of earthquake faulting, are used to investigate the active tectonics of the Middle East between western Turkey and Pakistan. The deformation of the western part of this region is dominated by the movement of continental material laterally away from the Lake Van region in eastern Turkey. This movement helps to avoid crustal thickening in the Van region, and allows some of the shortening between Arabia and Eurasia to be taken up by the thrusting of continental material over oceanic-type basement in the southern Caspian, Mediterranean, Makran and Black Sea. Thus central Turkey, bounded by the North and East Anatolian strike-slip faults, is moving west from the Van region and overrides the eastern Mediterranean at two intermediate depth seismic zones: one extending between Antalya Bay and southern Cyprus, and the other further west in the Hellenic Trench. The motion of northern Iran eastwards from the Van region is achieved mainly by a conjugate system of strike-slip faults and leads to the low angle thrusting of Iran over the southern Caspian Sea. The seismicity of the Caucasus shows predominantly shortening perpendicular to the regional strike, but there is also some minor elongation along the strike of the belt as the Causcasus overrides the Caspian and Black Seas. The deformation of the eastern part of this region is dominated by the shortening of Iran against the stable borders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. The north-east direction of compression seen in Zagros is also seen in north-east Iran and the Kopet Dag, where the shortening is taken up by a combination of strike-slip and thrust faulting. Large structural as well as palaeomagnetic rotations are likely to have occurred in NE Iran as a result of this style of deformation. North-south strike-slip faults in southern Iran allow some movement of material away from the collision zone in NE Iran towards the Makran subduction zone, where genuinely intermediate depth seismicity is seen. Within this broad deforming belt large areas, such as central Turkey, NW Iran (Azerbaijan), central Iran and the southern Caspian, appear to be almost aseismic and therefore to behave as relatively rigid blocks surrounded by active belts 200-300 km wide. The motion of these blocks can usefully be described by poles of rotation. The poles presented in this paper predict motions consistent with those observed and also predict the opening of the Gulf of Iskenderun NE of Cyprus, the change within the Zagros mountains from strike-slip faulting in the NW to intense thrusting in the SE, and the relatively feeble seismicity in SE Iran (Baluchistan). This description also explains why the north-south structures along the Iran-Afghanistan border do not cut the east-west ranges of the Makran. Within the active belts surrounding the relatively aseismic blocks a continuum approach is needed for a description of the deformation, even though motions at the surface may be concentrated on faults. The evolution of fault systems within the active zones is controlled by geometric constraints, such as the requirement that simultaneously active faults do not, in general, intersect. Many of the active processes discussed in this paper, particularly large-scale rotations and lateral movement along the regional strike, are likely to have caused substantial complexities in older mountain belts and should be accounted for in any reconstructions of them.

Mechanics of discontinuous faults

Abstract: Fault traces consist of numerous discrete segments, commonly arranged as echelon arrays. In some cases, discontinuities influence the distribution of slip and seismicity along faults. To analyze fault segments, we derive a two-dimensional solution for any number of nonintersecting cracks arbitrarily located in a homogeneous elastic material. The solution includes the elastic interaction between cracks. Crack surfaces are assumed to stick or slip according to a linear friction law. For an array of echelon cracks the ratio of maximum slip to array length significantly underestimates the difference between the driving stress and frictional resistance. The ratio of maximum slip to crack length slightly overestimates this difference. Stress distributions near right- and left-stepping echelon discontinuities differ in two important ways. For right lateral shear and left-stepping cracks, normal tractions on the overlapped crack ends increase and inhibit frictional sliding, whereas for right-stepping cracks, normal tractions decrease and facilitate sliding. The mean compressive stress between right-stepping cracks also decreases and promotes the formation of secondary fractures, which tend to link the cracks and allow slip to be transferred through the discontinuity. For left-stepping cracks the mean stress increases; secondary fracturing is more restricted and tends not to link the cracks. Earthquake swarms and aftershocks cluster near right steps along right lateral faults. Our results suggest that left steps store elastic strain energy and may be sites of large earthquakes. Opposite behavior results if the sense of shear is left lateral.