This paper discusses Coulomb failure criteria for brittle deformation of intact rock and fault gouge. Data are presented from laboratory experiments designed to identify the critical gouge layer thickness required to effect a transition from the standard Coulomb criterion to a modified failure law (referred to as Coulomb plasticity) appropriate for simple shear of a gouge layer. Experiments wer...

Does motor efficiency relate to “going green”? While the term going green originally applied to the release of greenhouse gasses, it has been broadened to include waste and inefficiency associated with factory operations in general and motors specifically. The green movement as it relates to motors is the result of industry becoming environmentally conscious with a wary eye on reducing its carb...

The presence of radon in drinking water causes health risks associated with exposure from both inhalation and ingestion. Since the studies show that faults near the water resources have a critical effect on the concentration of radon, Kouhbanan active fault zone, to find water resources  with high radon concentration was chosen for the following investigation. Water samples were taken from all ...

Neotectonic investigations using morphotectonic parameters such as basin asymmetry, drainage anomalies, digital data interpretation and geomorphic field evidences were carried out in Satluj river valley downstream of Khab in the Kaurik Chango Fault (KCF) zone. The study reveals the presence of a north-south trending fault which is similar to the KCF. Unpaired, tilted terraces, V shaped valleys,...

Seismicity along continental transform faults is usually confined to the upper half of the crust, but the Newport-Inglewood fault (NIF), a major fault traversing the Los Angeles basin, is seismically active down to the upper mantle. We use seismic array analysis to illuminate the seismogenic root of the NIF beneath Long Beach, California, and identify seismicity in an actively deforming localiz...

Thermal springs commonly occur along faults because of the enhanced vertical permeability afforded by fracture zones. Field and laboratory studies of fault zone materials document substantial heterogeneities in fracture permeabilities. Modeling and field studies of springs suggest that spatial variations in permeability strongly influence spring locations, discharge rates and temperatures. The ...

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0) produced a very large slip on the shallow part of a megathrust fault that resulted in destructive tsunamis. Although multiple causes of such large slip at shallow depths are to be expected, the frictional property of sediments around the fault, particularly at coseismic slip velocities, may significantly contribute to large slip along such faults. We have thu...

We applied a tomographic method to image an aseismic strike–slip fault in North Morocco and found that the occurrence of earthquakes is not only controlled by the state of tectonic stress but also by material heterogeneity in the crust. We have constructed an integrated model of seismic, electric, magnetic and heat flow properties across northeastern Morocco primarily based on a tomography inve...

The Eşen Basin is a ca. 30 km long and 15 km wide, NNE-SSW trending young graben which is located in SW Turkey between the Isparta Angle and the Western Anatolian Extensional Province (Fig. 3). The basin has a key position in the south-western part of the Fethiye-Burdur Fault Zone (FBFZ), which is a presumed strike-slip zone with faults that run through numerous small cities and villages. There...