A Note on Tsunami Bore Front

A note is presented on tsunami bore front. This tsunami bore front is an old dynamical problem but also a new problem to be understood. The tsunami event on 2004 December 26 has raised this is an urgent problem. The author introduces here a model in order to see a hydrodynamical specific property of the tsunami bore front. This modeling gives us a new understanding about what mechanics is for the interested tsunami bore front, especially, around a coastal zone. This work adds a new understanding about mechanics of water motions as the tsunamis generated by the earthquake undersea at a distant area from the coast. The model in this work points out a specific transitional pattern as a function of time and space of tsunami bore front. This modeling gives what is essential at considering tsunami bore front.     

Synchronization of human walking observed during lateral vibration of a congested pedestrian bridge

Observation of human-induced large-amplitude lateral vibration of an actual pedestrian bridge in an extremely congested condition is reported. Walking motions of pedestrians recorded by a video camera are analysed. It is found that walking among 20 per cent or more of the pedestrians on the bridge was synchronized to the girder lateral vibration. With this synchronization, the total lateral force from the pedestrians to the girder is evidently increased and it acts as a resonant force on the girder lateral vibration.     

Rare earth elements in metagabbros from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and their possible implications for the genesis of alkali olivine basalts as well as the lizard peridotite

Two foliated metagabbros from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near 30° N were analyzed for rare earth elements. The chondrite-normalized rare earth pattern for one of them is quite similar to those for abyssal tholeiites. The pattern for another sample, however, is somewhat different from the above one. A new set of bulk partition coefficients for rare earth elements has been estimated correspondingly. This set throws a new light on the interpretation that many alkali olivine basalts were produced by a zone melting or partial melting of primary-liquid-type material. Also the same partition coefficients lead us to an inference that the high-temperature peridotite intrusion in the Lizard area, Cornwall, England, is a secondary-solid-type material which was once in equilibrium with a primary-solid-type material, whereas the pyroxenite, Canyon Mountain, Oregon, is a primary-solid-type material.Both of the metagabbros studied show positive europium anomaly.     

Microearthquakes and faulting in the southern Okinawa Trough

Southern Okinawa Trough represents an early stage of back-arc rifting and is characterized by normal faulting and microearthquakes. Earthquake distribution and deep structure of fault was investigated to clarify active rifting in the southern Okinawa Trough, where two parallel grabens are located. A network of ocean bottom seismometers (OBSs) that displayed the hypocenters of 105 earthquakes were observed for a period of 4 days in southern-graben (SG). Most of the microearthquakes occurred in a cluster about 7 km wide, which on a cross-section striking N45°E dips 48° to the southwest. Relocated hypocenters, which are recorded by a local seismic network, show scattered distribution around the southern-graben. There are no remarkable surface faults in the southern-graben. On the other hand, the recalculation of hypocenter locations of 1996 earthquakes swarm recorded by a local seismic network suggests that the swarm is associated with normal faulting on the southern side of northern-graben (NG). Thus, the undeveloped southern-graben is located to the south of the developed northern-graben. Southward migration of rifting, which may be caused by migration of volcanism, could thus be occurring in the southern Okinawa Trough. The extension rate computed for the southern Okinawa Trough from the fault model of the northern-graben is 4.6 cm/year, which is 59–102% of the extension rate (GPS measurements). This result indicates that the majority of extensional deformation is concentrated within the center of the northern-graben in the Okinawa Trough.     

Effect of emersion and immersion on the porewater nutrient dynamics of an intertidal sandflat in Tokyo Bay

Porewater nutrient dynamics during emersion and immersion were investigated during different seasons in a eutrophic intertidal sandflat of Tokyo Bay, Japan, to elucidate the role of emersion and immersion in solute transport and microbial processes. The water content in the surface sediment did not change significantly following emersion, suggesting that advective solute transport caused by water table fluctuation was negligible. The rate of change in nitrate concentration in the top 10 mm of sediments ranged from −6.6 to 4.8 μmol N l⁻¹ bulk sed. h⁻¹ during the whole period of emersion. Steep nutrient concentration gradients in the surface sediment generated diffusive flux of nutrients directed downwards into deeper sediments, which greatly contributed to the observed rates of change in porewater nutrient concentration for several cases. Microbial nitrate reduction within the subsurface sediment appeared to be strongly supported by the downward diffusive flux of nitrate from the surface sediment. The stimulation of estimated nitrate production rate in the subsurface layer in proportion to the emersion time indicates that oxygenation due to emersion caused changes in the sediment redox environment and affected the nitrification and/or nitrate reduction rates. The nitrate and soluble reactive phosphorus pools in the top 10 mm of sediment decreased markedly during immersion (up to 68% for nitrate and up to 44% for soluble reactive phosphorus), however, this result could not be solely explained by molecular diffusion.     

A practical method for estimating dynamic soil stiffness on surface of multi‐layered soil

It is important to estimate the influence of layered soil in soil–structure interaction analyses. Although a great number of investigations have been carried out on this subject, there are very few practical methods that do not require complex calculations. In this paper, a simple and practical method for estimating the horizontal dynamic stiffness of a rigid foundation on the surface of multi‐layered soil is proposed. In this method, waves propagating in the soil are traced using the conception of the cone model, and the impulse response function can be calculated directly and easily in the time domain with a good degree of accuracy. The characteristics of the impedance, that is the transformed value to the frequency domain of the obtained impulse response, are studied using two‐ to four‐layered soil models. The cause of the fluctuation of impedance is expressed clearly from its relation to reflected waves from the lower layer boundary in the model. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seismic frame design via inverse mode design of frame-ground systems

A two-step stiffness design procedure is developed for a moment-resisting planar frame supported by a prescribed two-dimensional finite-element ground-pile system. In the first step, a hybrid inverse eigenmode problem is formulated and its solution is derived in an analytical form. A difficulty resulting from the existence of multiple interface nodes is overcome by incorporating a deformation constraint into a set of linear equations for finding the lowest-mode displacements at the interface nodes and in the ground. In the second step, the fundamental natural frequency of the combined system and the lowest mode-strain ratios in the frame specified in the first step are regarded as the parameters for adjusting the mean peak seismic member-end strains to their specified values. If the fundamental natural frequency of the frame with a fixed-base happens to be close to that of the ground, a difficulty arises in the two-step stiffness design procedure because of an irregular response amplification and of the non-predominance of the lowest-mode components. A new practical design procedure of rapid convergence is proposed such that an initial design is found for a stiff ground and that a sequence of stiffness designs is generated with respect to a ground stiffness parameter without any differential coefficient of series expansion. The accuracy of the model utilized in this paper and the validity of the present stiffness design procedure are verified through time-history response analysis.     

Velocity of finer fragments from impact

We describe the method and the result of a new experiment to obtain velocity distribution of fine ejecta fragments, from a few to a hundred microns in size, produced from basalt targets by impacts of nylon projectiles at a velocity of 3.7 km s⁻¹. The size distribution of holes perforated by the ejecta fragments on thin films and foils placed around the targets was investigated, and the size-velocity relation was determined with the aid of an empirical formula for threshold penetration (McDonnell and Sullivan, Hypervelocity Impacts in Space, Unit for Space Sciences, University of Kent, 1992). The velocity of the fastest fragments, at a given size, is from the extrapolation of the size-velocity relation for 1–100 mm fragments (Nakamura and Fujiwara, Icarus92, 132–146, 1991; Nakamura et al, Icarus100, 127–135, 1992). The laboratory results are also compared with those obtained from the study of secondary craters around large lunar craters (Vickery, Icarus67, 224–236, 1986, Geophys. Res. Lett. 14, 726–729, 1987). All these data provide a smooth size-velocity relationship in the normalized fragment size range of four orders of magnitude.     

Multistage melt/fluid-peridotite interactions in the refertilized lithospheric mantle beneath the North China Craton: constraints from the Li–Sr–Nd isotopic disequilibrium between minerals of peridotite xenoliths

Elemental and Li–Sr–Nd isotopic data of minerals in spinel peridotites hosted by Cenozoic basalts allow us to refine the existing models for Li isotopic fractionation in mantle peridotites and constrain the melt/fluid-peridotite interaction in the lithospheric mantle beneath the North China Craton. Highly elevated Li concentrations in cpx (up to 24 ppm) relative to coexisting opx and olivine (<4 ppm) indicate that the peridotites experienced metasomatism by mafic silicate melts and/or fluids. The mineral δ⁷Li vary greatly, with olivine (+0.7 to +5.4‰) being isotopically heavier than coexisting opx (−4.4 to −25.9‰) and cpx (−3.3 to −21.4‰) in most samples. The δ⁷Li in pyroxenes are considerably lower than the normal mantle values and show negative correlation with their Li abundances, likely due to recent Li ingress attended by diffusive fractionation of Li isotopes. Two exceptional samples have olivine δ⁷Li of −3.0 and −7.9‰, indicating the existence of low δ⁷Li domains in the mantle, which could be transient and generated by meter-scale diffusion of Li during melt/fluid-peridotite interaction. The ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd (0.5123–0.5139) and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr (0.7018–0.7062) in the pyroxenes also show a large variation, in which the cpx are apparently lower in ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and slightly higher in ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd than coexisting opx, implying an intermineral Sr–Nd isotopic disequilibrium. This is observed more apparently in peridotites having low ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and high ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd ratios than in those with high ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and low ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd, suggesting that a relatively recent interaction existed between an ancient metasomatized lithospheric mantle and asthenospheric melt, which transformed the refractory peridotites with highly radiogenic Sr and unradiogenic Nd isotopic compositions to the fertile lherzolites with unradiogenic Sr and radiogenic Nd isotopic compositions. Therefore, we argue that the lithospheric mantle represented by the peridotites has been heterogeneously refertilized by multistage melt/fluid-peridotite interactions.     

Concentrations of 137Cs, 90Sr, 108m Ag, 239+240 Pu and atom ratio of 240Pu/239Pu in tanner crabs, Chionoecetes japonicus and Chionoecetes opilio collected around Japan

The anthropogenic radionuclides, ¹³⁷Cs, ⁹⁰Sr, ^108mAg, ^239+240Pu, were measured in two Chionoecetes species, red queen crab (Chionoecetes japonicus) and snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) collected around Japan during 1996–2007. There was no increase in the concentrations of these radionuclides and no large variation of the atom ratio of ²⁴⁰Pu/²³⁹Pu during this research period. These results indicated that the source of the radionuclides was not the radioactive wastes dumped by the former USSR and Russia and originated from past nuclear weapon tests. The higher atom ratio in the crab species than that from global fallout would be contributed by the Pacific Proving Grounds close-in fallout. The variability of the concentration of radionuclides in the crab species would result from the variability of the composition and quantity in the diet. However, the decrease in the concentration of radionuclides with sampling depth would depend on the concentration in the seawater and diet.