Internal structures and high-velocity frictional properties of Longmenshan fault zone at Shenxigou activated during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

This paper reports internal structures of a wide fault zone at Shenxigou,Dujiangyan,Sichuan province,China,and high-velocity frictional properties of the fault gouge collected near the coseismic slip zone during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.Vertical offset and horizontal displacement at the trench site were 2.8 m（NW side up）and 4.8 m（right-lateral）,respectively.The fault zone formed in Triassic sandstone,siltstone,and shale about 500 m away from the Yingxiu-Beichuan fault,a major fault in the Longmenshan fault system.A trench survey across the coseismic fault,and observations of outcrops and drill cores down to a depth of 57 m revealed that the fault zone consists of fault gouge and fault breccia of about0.5 and 250-300 m in widths,respectively,and that the fault strikes N62°E and dips 68° to NW.Quaternary conglomerates were recovered beneath the fault in the drilling,so that the fault moved at least 55 m along the coseismic slip zone,experiencing about 18 events of similar sizes.The fault core is composed of grayish gouge（GG） and blackish gouge（BG） with very complex slip-zone structures.BG contains low-crystalline graphite of about 30 %.High-velocity friction experiments were conducted at normal stresses of 0.6-2.1 MPa and slip rates of 0.1-2.1 m/s.Both GG and BG exhibit dramatic slip weakening at constant high slip rates that can be described as an exponential decay from peak friction coefficient lpto steadystate friction coefficient lssover a slip-weakening distance Dc.Deformation of GG and BG is characterized by overlapped slip-zone structures and development of sharp slickenside surfaces,respectively.Comparison of our data with those reported for other outcrops indicates that the high-velocity frictional properties of the Longmenshan fault zones are quite uniform and the high-velocity weakening must have promoted dynamic rupture propagation during the Wenchuan earthquake.

Analysis of Dynamic Characteristics of Crustal Horizontal Deformation in the South Segment of Longmenshan Fault Zone Revealed by GPS Data after the Wenchuan Earthquake

In order to obtain deformation parameters in the south segment of Longmenshan fault zone,Euler datum transformation and the least square collocation for data interpolation and smoothing are used to process GPS displacement time series data in the south segment of Longmenshan fault zone,and the rigid and elastic-plastic block motion model is used to calculate the strain parameters in each subarea. Conjoint analysis of displacement,velocity of each station and strain parameters of each subarea reveals that the influence of the Wenchuan earthquake on the south segment of Longmenshan fault zone increases from southeast to northwest,causing a highest deformation rate 6 times the background value and heightening the influence of the hidden faults on the difference of the earth surface along its two sides,which leads to the seismic risk of the southern segment increasing from north to south. The comparison of seismic risk among subareas based on the tectonic and seismicity background indicates that the most dangerous area is on the southeast of Longmenshan faults,and the background strain accumulation and the promoting effect of the Wenchuan earthquake advanced the occurrence of Lushan earthquake and the sinistral strike-slip on the rupture plane. The Wenchuan earthquake also caused a slight two-year long continuous strain release in the south segment of Xianshuihe fault,but the influence is far less than the effect of the compressive strain caused by the Sichuan-Yunnan block.