Safety of the next-generation space flight vehicles requires development of an in-flight Failure Detection and Prognostic (FD&P) system. Development of such system is challenging task that involves analysis of many hard hitting engineering problems across the board. In this paper we report progress in the development of FD&P for the re-contact fault between upper stage nozzle and the inter-stag...

Balanced regional cross sections based on surface, seismic, and subsurface data show that the thin-skinned fold-and-thrust belt in Rocky Mountain Foothills of Kakwa area central Canadian Rockies consists a lower buried thrust developed Paleozoic Triassic strata an upper exposed faulted fold Jurassic to Cretaceous strata. Changes wavelength, amplitude, geometry with stratigraphic level indicate ...

[1] We calculated static stress changes from the devastating M = 7.6 earthquake that shook Kashmir on 8 October, 2005. We mapped Coulomb stress change on target fault planes oriented by assuming a regional compressional stress regime with greatest principal stress directed orthogonally to the mainshock strike. We tested calculation sensitivity by varying assumed stress orientations, target-faul...

Strain patterns within the forearc at a convergent margin adjacent to a passing fault-fault-trench triple junction show a systematic evolution. We describe late Neogene and Quaternary deformation in northern coastal California in the last 3 m.y. associated with the migration of the Mendocino triple junction. Deformation in the North American forearc near Humbolt Bay consists of a 30-km-wide zon...

Insight into the mechanics of brittle strain localization and fault propagation is gained by investigating the growth of deformation bands and fault–related deformation band damage zones. In porous granular rocks such as sandstone or tuff, the onset of brittle strain localization is characterized by pore space collapse along nucleating deformation bands, then by shear displacements along propag...

We show a correlation between the occurrence of shallow thrust earthquakes and the occurrence of the strongest tides. The rate of earthquakes varies from the background rate by a factor of 3 with the tidal stress. The highest correlation is found when we assume a coefficient of friction of mu = 0.4 for the crust, although we see good correlation for mu between 0.2 and 0.6. Our results quantify ...

Thrust fault earthquakes are studied in a laboratory earthquake setup previously used to investigate analog strike-slip seismic events. Dynamic mode II ruptures are generated along preexisting faults in an analog material, Homalite H-100, and their interaction with the free surface is studied for both sub-Rayleigh and supershear rupture speeds. High-speed digital photography and laser velocimet...