NON-LINEAR DYNAMIC MODELING OF DIP-SLIP FAULTS FOR STUDYING GROUND SURFACE DEFORMATION USING APPLIED ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

This paper contributes to understand the response of soil deposits due to underlying bedrock fault displacement. When an active bedrock fault ruptures, the movement along the fault propagates through the overlying soil and produces zones of intense shear. If the fault movement propagates upto or near the ground surface, the damage to constructed facilities due to faulting, in conjunction with that induced by strong ground motion, can be significant. Moreover, the damage can be catastrophic if the fault propagates through a critical facility such as a dam or a power plant. Hence, the hazard of surface faulting is also an important problem in earthquake engineering because of potentially adverse consequences of ground breakage. Hence, it is important to study the surface behavior based on the fault characteristics. For this reason, we attempted to develop a new application to Applied Element Method (AEM) by modelling the fault rupture zone in 2-D to study the behaviour of dip-slip faults. The effect of the slip velocity on the ground motion is studied and then the attenuation of PGA in the near fault zone is studied.