Displacement and stress fields due to finite faults and opening-mode fractures in an anisotropic elastic half-space

Abstract

The elastic displacement and stress fields due to rectangular faults and opening-mode fractures within an anisotropic homogeneous half-space are derived in this paper. The solution is expressed in terms of the mathematically elegant and computationally powerful Stroh formalism and can be applied to the generally anisotropic half-space or a transversely isotropic half-space with any oriented isotropic plane. For any flat fault or opening-mode fracture of polygonal shape, one needs only to carry out a simple line integral from 0 to πin order to express the fault-induced response. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effect of the anisotropy and fault orientation on the internal and surface responses of the half-space. Our results prove that both rock anisotropy and fault orientation could dramatically change the fields in the domain and one needs to consider these properties as accurately as possible to be able to predict the response in the domain precisely. Anisotropy of the rock mass may alter the dominant displacement and stress components at observation points in the model domain as compared to the isotropic case.