STUDY ON RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ACTIVITY OF MIYALUO FAULT AND WENCHUAN EARTHQUAKE SEQUENCE

Under the background of thrusting stress regime, a large number of strike-slip earthquakes occurred on the Miyaluo Fault during the Wenchuan earthquake sequence process, which is in the southern part of the Longmenshan Fault. In order to find the cause of their occurrence, stress tensors in subregions near the Miyaluo Fault are estimated. The result shows that in both north and south side of the Miyaluo Fault, the direction of principal compressive stress is nearly perpendicular to the Longmenshan Fault, and its dip is nearly horizontal, and the direction of tensile stress is nearly vertical. While in the Miyaluo fault zone, the direction of principal compressive stress is SWW-NEE, and its dip is nearly horizontal, the direction of principal tensile stress is NNW-SSE, also its dip is nearly horizontal. It is consistent with sinistral shear stress state in the Miyaluo fault zone. It was referred that the behavior of Miyaluo Fault during the Wenchuan earthquake sequence process was caused by tearing effect generated from unbalanced forces of two sides of the fault. To understand the rupture mode of the aftershocks in subregions as described above, the total seismic moment tensors are estimated by adding the corresponding component separately of the seismic moment tensor of aftershocks in each region. The result shows the similar trend of total seismic moment tensor components in the north and south side of the Miyaluo Fault(indicating the consistency of rupture mode in the north and south side of the Miyaluo Fault), and most seismic moment tensor components in the south side is higher than that in the north side, especially the compression component perpendicular to Longmenshan Fault and expansion component in the vertical direction. It indicates that thrusting component in the southeast direction in the south side is greater than that in the north side, and the thrusting difference causes the sinistral tearing effect of the Miyaluo Fault. We also find that the sinistral tearing component of the Miyaluo Fault is the same order of magnitude with the thrusting difference of its two sides, which indicates that the tearing effect of Miyaluo Fault can be completely explained by thrusting difference of its two sides. According to the analysis, we put forward the dynamic model of the Miyaluo Fault, which can explain the above phenomenon.