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Effects of tectonic stress field and Poisson’s ratio on stress state within the San Andreas Fault zone

  • Article
  • Geophysics
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

We used a mechanics conceptual model to provide another perspective to understand the mechanical environment of the San Andreas Fault (SAF), and a possible mechanism that the principal stress state in the SAF is not only affected by remote tectonic stress but also by Poisson’s ratio. For a strike-slip fault like the SAF, we found that in the fault zone with Poisson’s ratio of >0.25, effective friction coefficient and the stress ratio (minimum principal stress/maximum principal stress) are less than 0.1 and 0.8–1.0, respectively, corresponding to remote tectonic stress ratio of 0.36–1.0, and that the higher the Poisson’s ratio, the greater the principal stress rotates. For hydrostatic pore pressure and a received tectonic stress ratio of 0.5 around the SAF, the model predicts that the SAF has a very high Poisson’s ratio (~0.45), which accommodates extremely low effective friction coefficient (0.09) and large stress ratio (0.84) or smaller shear stress (17 MPa).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41074070) and Special Research Project in Earthquake Science of China (200808068).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geophysics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zhoumin Xie & Yongen Cai

  2. Institute of Crustal Dynamics, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100085, China

    Zhoumin Xie

Authors
  1. Zhoumin Xie
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  2. Yongen Cai
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Correspondence to Yongen Cai.

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Xie, Z., Cai, Y. Effects of tectonic stress field and Poisson’s ratio on stress state within the San Andreas Fault zone. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 2994–2998 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0216-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0216-7

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