Static Stress Strain Analysis in a Laterally Inhomogeneous Lithosphere-Asthenosphere System

Abstract

Noting that the Real Earth being highly laterally inhomogeneous
where, the rigidity of the material of the Earth gradually increases/
decreases as we go apart from any earthquake fault .In the present
paper the lithosphere- asthenosphere system is considered up to a
depth of 200 km. from the free surface where rigidity is assumed
to vary linearly with distance from the fault. We have tried to de-
velop a mathematical model to investigate the eect of this variation
of rigidity with distance on stress and strain accumulation/release
in the lithosphere-asthenosphere system due to the movement across
the long strike slip fault assumed to be situated vertically and sur-
face breaking. The associated boundary value problem is numerically
solved by nite dierence method in presence of discontinuity and
a MATLAB program is developed. It is found that the continuous
change of rigidity with distance from the fault has considerable eect
on the nature of stress-strain accumulation /release in the system as
compared to the elastic half-space and elastic layered model.