Physics of fracturing and seismic energy release: A review

This review was prepared as an opening lecture for the International Symposium on Physics of Fracturing and Seismic Energy Release, held at the Castle of Liblice near Prague from October 28 to November 1, 1985, and organized by the Geophysical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The review attempts to classify and synthesize results of recent studies in fracture mechanics and earthquake source physics. The following topics are discussed: recent developments in fracture mechanics, earthquake source modeling, heterogeneous fault planes, foreshocks and aftershocks, faults and fractals, and moment tensor solutions. This rather broad range of topics prevents presentation of a complete list of all relevant works, though over one hundred and seventy references are cited.