基于震例探讨大地震的物理机制

查明大地震物理机制对地震预测和防震减灾具有重要意义.本文评述了当前主流地震机制假说,指出用于描述浅源地震机制的弹性回跳说和粘滑说存在诸多缺陷;前人提出的脱水致裂、相变失稳、剪切熔融和反裂隙断层作用等中-深源地震机制假说,均存在与观测事实不符的情况.本文简要介绍了近些年我们发展的孕震断层多锁固段脆性破裂理论,指出断层运动导致锁固段累进性破裂发生地震,称锁固段在体积膨胀点和峰值强度点发生的显著地震为标志性地震事件.震例分析表明,浅源、中源、深源及其混合型地震区标志性地震事件的孕育规律均遵循该理论.进一步的讨论指出,弹性回跳说和粘滑说均隐含着断层面上存在锁固段的假设;深源地震震源体具有发生脆性破裂的环境条件;该理论能合理解释地震应力降远小于室内岩石破裂应力降、热流佯谬和自组织临界性这些难点问题.这充分说明,大地震物理机制均可统一解释为锁固段脆性破裂.

Physical mechanism of major earthquakes by earthquake cases

Understanding the physical mechanism of major earthquakes is very important for earthquake prediction and its disaster reduction. The mainstream hypotheses on earthquake mechanism are reviewed in this paper. It is pointed out that the elastic rebound and stick-slip hypotheses, both of which are usually used to explain the mechanism of shallow-focus earthquakes, have some serious drawbacks, and that such hypotheses explaining the mechanism of intermediate- and deep-focus earthquakes as the dehydration embrittlement, phase transition instability, shear melting and anticrack-associated faulting, are inconsistent with some observation data. Thus, it is necessary to establish a new hypothesis or theory on earthquake mechanism. The brittle failure theory of multiple locked patches in a seismogenic fault system developed by us since 2010, is introduced in the present study. It is stated by the theory that the progressive failures of locked patch result in the occurrence of earthquakes due to the fault movement. Hereafter, the significant earthquakes occurred at its volume expansion and peak strength points are referred to as characteristic ones. The earthquake cases indicate that the seismogenic processes of shallow-, intermediate- and deep-focus characteristic earthquakes can be well explained by the theory. We emphasize that both the elastic rebound and stick-slip hypotheses contain the same implicit assumption that there exist locked patches in the seismogenic faults, and that the source body of deep-focus earthquakes is with appropriate environment conditions leading to brittle failures. Moreover, some controversial issues, such as seismic stress drop much less than that of rock failure in the laboratory test, heat flow paradox and Self-Organized Criticality (SOC), are discussed and can be reasonably explained by the theory. The present study shows that the physical mechanism of major earthquakes is attributed to the brittle failures of locked patches.