COMPUTATIONAL STUDY ON A NUMERICAL METHOD FOR FAULT-DISPLACEMENT ESTIMATION

Abstract

A numerical method based on the foundamental mechanism of fault slip is essential for a reliable estimation of surface fault displacement. A rigorous joint element and a time integration method for energy conservation are required for the numerical method. In this paper, a rigorous formulation of joint element for three-dimensional FEM is derived from the variation of Lagrangian on a fault plane. Symplectic time integration is applied for energy conservation. Some numerical tests demonstrate their advantage comparing to conventional methods.