Analysis of foreshock sequence of the 1975 Haicheng earthquake of M S 7.3

The “earthquake nucleation” is discussed in this paper. The acceleration is a property of the nucleation phase and is a necessary condition of earthquake instability too. If the acceleration property of this nucleating process is described by the equation dΘ/dt=C/(t _f−t) ⁿ , the process can be summarized briefly that the rate of cumulative seismic release is proportional to the inverse power of the remaining time to failure. Based on this principle, the foreshock sequence of the 1975 Haicheng earthquake withM _S7.3, was analysed backward. It is stated clearly that the time-to-failure and magnitude of the mainshock can be predicted successfully if the coefficientr ² attains to the maximum. In the estimation of mainshock time, the error can generally be less than, or far less than, one-half the remaining time between the time of the last used data point and the mainshock. Contribution No. 95A0024, Institute of Geophysics, SSB, China. This study is the "Eighth-Five" contract project ofSSB.