During the 1970's, several authors reported the so-called ‘migrating crustal move ments’ observed in some tectonic regions such as the south Kanto and central Tohoku districts, Japan, and Peru. In this paper, we consider one of these phenomena, that is observed in the central Tohoku district, by means of numerical experiments. The experiments are carried out with a two-dimensional finite element model of a vertical cross-section of the central Tohoku district. The upper-crust is assumed to be elastic, while the lower-crust and the upper-mantle are both assumed to be visco-elastic. The responses of the elastic upper-crust to sinusoidal boundary shear stresses applied to the plate boundary near the Japan trench clearly show migrations of strain (or stress) waves. The velocities of migration obtained from numerical experiments (about 130 km/yr at the period of 5 yr) and from observations (about 40 km/yr at the almost same period) are, however, different from each other. This discrepancy is considered to be mainly due to uncertainty in the crustal structure as well as in the physical parameters such as viscosity. Even though there is some discrepancy between the experimental and observational results, we can expect the existence of the migrating crustal movements if the interaction between the oceanic and continental plates varies gradually with time.
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