INTERPRETATION OF BOREHOLE STRAIN ANNUAL CHANGE AT GUZAN STATION BY NUMERICAL SIMULATION

China is one of the earliest countries to start borehole strain observation aiming to predicting earthquake.YRY-4 and other borehole strain instruments developed by China have reached the world advanced level,with a resolution of 10^-10 and can work stably.In order to capture the tectonic stress signals and analyze the relationship with seismicity,it is firstly necessary to identify and exclude the non-structure stress signals (caused e.g.by rainfall,pressure change,groundwater level fluctuation,river fluctuation etc).Annual strain change signals have been observed by YRY-4 borehole strain instrument at some stations (e.g.Guzan station in Dadu River valley).The signal is on the wave crest in spring and trough in autumn.Up to now,no relative papers have interpreted the physical mechanism causing such strain signals.In this paper,we manage to explain the physical mechanism by using numerical simulation.Considering the terrain factor of Dadu River valley,we set up a 3D finite-lement thermoelastic coupling model to compute the heat stress caused by annual change of surface temperature.The computing results are in good accordance with observation values,which illustrates that the annual change of strain signals is caused by annual change of surface temperature.We suggest that high-resolution borehole strain instrument (e.g.YRY-4 strain instrument) should avoid installing in a terribly undulate area,but choose a flat one.Although the strain signal with an annual change is a noise signal,to a certain extent,the signal illustrates that the current borehole strain instrument has a high resolution.This gives us more confidence to use this instrument to measure the structural strain.