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Experimental Study of Thermal Field Evolution in the Short-Impending Stage Before Earthquakes

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Abstract

Phenomena at critical points are vital for identifying the short-impending stage prior to earthquakes. The peak stress is a critical point when stress is converted from predominantly accumulation to predominantly release. We call the duration between the peak stress and instability “the meta-instability stage”, which refers to the short-impending stage of earthquakes. The meta-instability stage consists of a steady releasing quasi-static stage and an accelerated releasing quasi-dynamic stage. The turning point of the above two stages is the remaining critical point. To identify the two critical points in the field, it is necessary to study the characteristic phenomena of various physical fields in the meta-instability stage in the laboratory, and the strain and displacement variations were studied. Considering that stress and relative displacement can be detected by thermal variations and peculiarities in the full-field observations, we employed a cooled thermal infrared imaging system to record thermal variations in the meta-instability stage of stick slip events generated along a simulated, precut planer strike slip fault in a granodiorite block on a horizontally bilateral servo-controlled press machine. The experimental results demonstrate the following: (1) a large area of decreasing temperatures in wall rocks and increasing temperatures in sporadic sections of the fault indicate entrance into the meta-instability stage. (2) The rapid expansion of regions of increasing temperatures on the fault and the enhancement of temperature increase amplitude correspond to the turning point from the quasi-static stage to the quasi-dynamic stage. Our results reveal thermal indicators for the critical points prior to earthquakes that provide clues for identifying the short-impending stage of earthquakes.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Yanqun Zhuo and Yuntao Ji for their help in performing the experiments. The comments by the anonymous reviewers helped to improve the manuscript. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41172180,41572181) and Basic Research Funds from the Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration (Grant No. DQJB15B07).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Seismic Observation and Geophysical Imaging, Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration, No.5 Minzudaxuenan Rd, Beijing, 100081, China

    Yaqiong Ren

  2. State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, No.1 Huayan Rd, Beijing, 100029, China

    Yaqiong Ren, Jin Ma, Peixun Liu & Shunyun Chen

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  1. Yaqiong Ren
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Correspondence to Jin Ma.

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Ren, Y., Ma, J., Liu, P. et al. Experimental Study of Thermal Field Evolution in the Short-Impending Stage Before Earthquakes. Pure Appl. Geophys. 175, 2527–2539 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-017-1626-7

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