Fault displacement hazard for strike-slip faults

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
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Abstract

In this paper we present a methodology, data, and regression equations for calculating the fault rupture hazard at sites near steeply dipping, strike-slip faults. We collected and digitized on-fault and off-fault displacement data for 9 global strikeslip earthquakes ranging from moment magnitude M 6.5 to M 7.6 and supplemented these with displacements from 13 global earthquakes compiled byWesnousky (2008), who considers events up to M 7.9. Displacements on the primary fault fall off at the rupture ends and are often measured in meters, while displacements on secondary (offfault) or distributed faults may measure a few centimeters up to more than a meter and decay with distance from the rupture. Probability of earthquake rupture is less than 15% for cells 200 m??200 m and is less than 2% for 25 m??25 m cells at distances greater than 200mfrom the primary-fault rupture. Therefore, the hazard for off-fault ruptures is much lower than the hazard near the fault. Our data indicate that rupture displacements up to 35cm can be triggered on adjacent faults at distances out to 10kmor more from the primary-fault rupture. An example calculation shows that, for an active fault which has repeated large earthquakes every few hundred years, fault rupture hazard analysis should be an important consideration in the design of structures or lifelines that are located near the principal fault, within about 150 m of well-mapped active faults with a simple trace and within 300 m of faults with poorly defined or complex traces.
Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Fault displacement hazard for strike-slip faults
Series title Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
DOI 10.1785/0120100035
Volume 101
Issue 2
Year Published 2011
Language English
Larger Work Type Article
Larger Work Subtype Journal Article
Larger Work Title Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
First page 805
Last page 825
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