Numerical simulation for 1975 Haicheng and 1999 Xiuyan earthquake processes by DDA+FEM

Introduction The Xiuyan earthquake(MS=5.4)on Nov.29,1999,occurred between Hushan town and Pi-anling town at the southeast end of the aftershocks of Haicheng earthquake(MS=7.3).These two earthquakes′sequences are highly similar in the way that the foreshocks are very frequent,focal mechanisms of the main shocks are about the same and fault strikes are approximately in the same direction.It is important to study these earthquakes for further research on seismogenesis to fore-cast earthquake…     

The dependence of response spectrum on the tectonic ambient shear stress field

Introduction The acceleration response spectrum and peak ground acceleration are the necessary and im-portant parameters in earthquake-resistant design at present. They are still active research field. With the increase of digital high accurate strong motion observation data, especially the earth-quakes of Loma Prieta (M=7.0) in 1989; Landers (M=7.3) in 1992; Big Bear (M=6.4) in 1994 and Northridge (M=6.7) in 1994 in USA; Kozani (M=6.6) earthquake and afteshocks in 1995 in Greece; Dinar…     

On the applicability of KirchofPs law and the principle of heat balance in thermal infrared remote sensing:A non-isothermal system

This paper proposes a basic equation of thermal radiation interaction between surface objects on the basis of the principle of heat balance in the interface. The solution of this equation takes account of the contribution of sensible heat flux and latent heat flux more completely, compared with traditional solution for surface cooling and heating processes. By the aid of the experimental data conducted in the Xiaotangshan experimental site, Beijing, both the non-applicability of Kirchoff's law and the measurability of surface emissivity in a non-isothermal system have been highlighted. Two methods called ventilation and time-delay compensations have been proposed to reduce the error induced by change of surface temperatures of non-isothermal objects during the measurement of emissivity. Based on the solution of the basic equation, this paper has analyzed and pointed out the misunderstanding in comprehension and application of Kirchoff's law published in literature.     

Sorption of Eu~(3+) onto nano-size silica-water interfaces

A large amount of nuclear wastes has been pro-duced due to nuclear weapon development and nuclear electricity generation. One possible resolution for the disposal of the nuclear wastes is to seal them in an underground repository, which requires detailed knowledge on the mobility, chemical behavior and immobilization of radionuclides in underground water. In addition, toxic heavy metals are extensively present in ground and underground water, how to immobilize and remedy these toxic heavy meta…     

Study on simulating strong ground motion by fractal stochastic method

The time history of strong ground motion can be synthesized by empirical Green's function (EGF) method.Firstly a large seismic event is discretized into a series of subevents; secondly recordings of earthquakes with proper size and spatial distribution are chosen as time history (EGF) of those subevents; finally the EGFs are summated to get the time history of ground motion caused by the large event.     

Assessing the Comparability of Ammonium,Nitrate and Sulfate Concentrations Measured by Three Air Quality Monitoring Networks

Airborne fine particulate matter across the United States is monitored by different networks, the three prevalent ones presently being the Clean Air Status and Trend Network (CASTNet), the Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environment Network (IMPROVE) and the Speciation and Trend Network (STN). If combined, these three networks provide speciated fine particulate data at several hundred locations throughout the United States. Yet, differences in sampling protocols and samples handling may not allow their joint use. With these concerns in mind, the objective of this study is to assess the spatial and temporal comparability of the sulfate, nitrate and ammonium concentrations reported by each of these networks. One of the major differences between networks is the sampling frequency they adopted. While CASTNet measures pollution levels on seven-day integrated samples, STN and IMPROVE data pertain to 24-hour samples collected every three days. STN and IMPROVE data therefore exhibit considerably more short-term variability than their CASTNet counterpart. We show that, despite their apparent incongruity, averaging the data with a window size of four to six weeks is sufficient to remove the effects of differences in sampling frequency and duration and allow meaningful comparison of the signals reported by the three networks of concern. After averaging, all the sulfate and, to a lesser degree, ammonium concentrations reported are fairly similar. Nitrate concentrations, on the other hand, are still divergent. We speculate that this divergence originates from the different types of filters used to collect particulate nitrate. Finally, using a rotated principal component technique (RPCA), we determined the number and the geographical organization of the significant temporal modes of variation (clusters) detected by each network for the three pollutants of interest. For sulfate and ammonium, the clusters’ geographical boundaries established for each network and the modes of variations within each cluster seem to correspond. RPCA erformed on nitrate concentrations revealed that, for the CASTNet and IMPROVE networks, the modes of variation do not correspond to unified geographical regions but are found more sporadically. For STN, the clustered areas are unified and easily delineable. We conclude that the possibility of jointly using the data collected by CASTNet, IMPROVE and STN has to be weighed pollutant by pollutant. While sulfate and ammonium data show some potential for joint use, at this point, combining the nitrate data from these monitoring networks may not be a judicious choice.     

Geostatistical simulation of random fields with bivariate isofactorial distributions by adding mosaic models

This work deals with the geostatistical simulation of a family of stationary random field models with bivariate isofactorial distributions. Such models are defined as the sum of independent random fields with mosaic-type bivariate distributions and infinitely divisible univariate distributions. For practical applications, dead leaf tessellations are used since they provide a wide range of models and allow conditioning the realizations to a set of data via an iterative procedure (simulated annealing). The model parameters can be determined by comparing the data variogram and madogram, and enable to control the spatial connectivity of the extreme values in the realizations. An illustration to a forest dataset is presented, for which a negative binomial model is used to characterize the distribution of coniferous trees over a wooded area.     

Study of statistically correcting model CMAQ-MOS for forecasting regional air quality

Based on analysis of the air pollution observational data at 8 observation sites in Beijing including outer suburbs during the period from September 2004 to March 2005, this paper reveals synchronal and in-phase characteristics in the spatial and temporal variation of air pollutants on a city-proper scale at deferent sites; describes seasonal differences of the pollutant emission influence between the heating and non-heating periods, also significantly local differences of the pollutant emission influence between the urban district and outer suburbs, i.e. the spatial and temporal distribution of air pollutant is closely related with that of the pollutant emission intensity. This study shows that due to complexity of the spatial and temporal distribution of pollution emission sources, the new generation Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model developed by the EPA of USA produced forecasts, as other models did, with a systematic error of significantly lower than observations, albeit the model has better capability than previous models had in predicting the spatial distribution and variation tendency of multi-sort pollutants. The reason might be that the CMAQ adopts average amount of pollutant emission inventory, so that the model is difficult to objectively and finely describe the distribution and variation of pollution emission sources intensity on different spatial and temporal scales in the areas, in which the pollution is to be forecast. In order to correct the systematic prediction error resulting from the average pollutant emission inventory in CMAQ, this study proposes a new way of combining dynamics and statistics and establishes a statistically correcting model CMAQ-MOS for forecasts of regional air quality by utilizing the relationship of CMAQ outputs with corresponding observations, and tests the forecast capability. The investigation of experiments presents that CMAQ-MOS reduces the systematic errors of CMAQ because of the uncertainty of pollution emission inventory and improves the forecast level of air quality. Also this work employed a way of combining point and area forecasting, i.e. taking the products of CMAQ for a center site to forecast air pollution for other sites in vicinity with the scheme of model products "reanalysis" and average over the "area".     

Strain accumulation in sand due to cyclic loading: drained triaxial tests

Our aim is the prediction of the accumulation of strain and/or stress under cyclic loading with many (thousands to millions) cycles and relatively small amplitudes. A high-cycle constitutive model is used for this purpose. Its formulas are based on numerous cyclic tests. This paper describes drained tests with triaxial compression and uniaxial stress cycles. The influence of the strain amplitude, the average stress, the density, the cyclic preloading history and the grain size distribution on the direction and the intensity of strain accumulation is discussed.     

Use of time series analysis for the identification of tidal effect on groundwater in the coastal area of Kimje, Korea

The purpose of this study is to apply time series analysis to investigate whether the groundwater quality in the coastal area is affected by the tide. Continuous and regular in situ monitoring data of electrical conductivity (EC) and groundwater level, and tidal level data measured by the National Oceanographic Research Institute were used for the time series analysis. Through the time series analysis, it is known that EC and groundwater level conspicuously fluctuate with two periodicities (15.4 and 0.52-day), which is very similar to those of the tide. Also the behaviors of their fluctuations vary in accordance with the tidal period. These indicate that the groundwater quality has been mainly controlled by the tidal level, and the strength of tidal effect on the groundwater quality is different according to the tidal period.