Download Offline Modelling Of Earthquake Using Matlab

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering &Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 1 Issue2 pp 045-048 May 2012
www. ijsret.org
ISSN 2278 – 0882
Offline Modelling Of Earthquake Using Matlab
Kapil Mangla1, Richa Saluja2, Mandeep Beri3
1,3
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
Satya College of Engineering & Technology, Palwal, Haryana, India
[email protected], [email protected]
2
Department of Electrical Engineering
Rawal Institute of Engineering & Technology, Faridabad, Haryana, India
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
The Earthquake has been a major natural calamity
for centuries. The loss of human life and
infrastructure has been tremendous. The latest
earthquake in Japan left hundreds of people dead,
infrastructure destructed, thousands peoples
homeless and many other problems generate. The
Bhuj earthquake (Mw 7.7) of the State of Gujarat on
January 26, 2001, that occurred in most disastrous
earthquake in India’s history. While the actual
figures of death and injury remain uncertain, going
by the official figures, at least 20,000 people were
dead and more than 200,000 were injured. Nearly
400,000 houses were destroyed. The worst
earthquake in the history of the world struck in
China on 23 January 1556, leaving 830,000 peoples
died and even more homeless. This paper is an
attempt to simulate and analyze the Earthquake,
motivated by the current series of Earthquake hitting
different parts of the earth. Toward this end we have
used MATLAB for this work because of its
flexibility and high level User Interaction (UI).
Specifically we have tried to analyze the level of
destruction/losses by earthquake in India. This work
thus forms a basis for having a coarse idea of impact
of the earthquake.
I.
INTRODUCTION
This work provides a basis for simulating EQ using
MATLAB. MATLAB has been used as it provides
lots of benefits as compared to other tools available
in the market. Predicting earthquake has obvious
advantages. If done with more accurate seismic data
we can achieve some breakthrough success. Among
the natural calamities, earthquakes are the most
destructive, in terms of loss of life and destruction of
property. Often, they occur without any warning,
which make them the most feared and unpredictable
natural phenomena. On an average, two earthquakes
of magnitude 8 are reported to occur globally every
year. Japan, the United States and China have
experienced several damaging earthquakes in the
past. These countries have also done some of the
pioneering studies on earthquakes. Many destructive
earthquakes have occurred in India in the recent past,
causing damages worth crores of rupees and
claiming many thousands of human lives. More than
650 earthquakes of magnitude >5.0 have been
reported in India since 1890 Seismology. As
described in section [1], describe the science behind
the Earthquake. This is further divided in three
phases. The first phase, define the faults that may
cause an earthquake. In second phase, the waves are
created when stress is released as energy in
earthquake. The third phase, referred as magnitude
of the earthquake and finally in section [2], we
define how we can analyse the different sensitive
region.
II.
SCIENCE BEHIND EARTHQUAKE
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor, or
temblor) is the result of a sudden release of energy in
the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves.
Earthquakes are recorded with a seismometer, also
known as a seismograph. The expression “on solid
ground” is often used to describe something as stable.
Usually the solid ground underfoot seems very stable.
IJSRET @ 2012
International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering &Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 1 Issue2 pp 045-048 May 2012
www. ijsret.org
ISSN 2278 – 0882
But sometimes it is not. Earthquakes of the greatest
intensity happen about once a year and major
earthquakes (7.0-7.9) occur about 18 times a year.
Strong earthquakes (6.0-6.9) occur about 10 times a
month and moderate earthquakes (5.0-5.9) happen
more than twice daily. Sometimes an earthquake
under the ocean can be so severe; it will cause a
tsunami, responsible for far greater damage.
Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of
geological faults, but also by other events such as
volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear
tests.

The rock on one side of the fault is moved
down relative to the rock on the other side of the
fault.

Normal faults will not make an overhanging
rock ledge.

In a normal fault it is likely that you could
walk on an exposed area of the fault.
In spite of extensive research and sophisticated
equipment, it is impossible to predict an earthquake,
although experts can estimate the likelihood of an
earthquake occurring in a particular region.
Fig. 2 Normal Dip-Slip Fault
B.
Fig. 1
This diagram shows an earthquake along a fault. The
focus of the earthquake is where the energy is
released underground. The epicentre is the spot on
the Earth’s surface directly above the focus. The
location inside the Earth where an earthquake begins
is called the focus or hypocenter. The point at the
Earth’s surface directly above the focus is called the
epicentre. The strongest shaking happens at the
epicentre.
Reverse Dip-Slip Fault

Reverse faults happen in areas where the
rocks are pushed together (compression forces) so
that the rocky crust of an area must take up less
space.

The rock on one side of the fault is pushed
up relative to rock on the other side.

In a reverse fault the exposed area of the
fault is often an overhang. Thus you could not walk
on it.

Thrust faults are a special type of reverse
fault. They happen when the fault angle is very low.
II.1. Geological Fault
A fault is a crack in the Earth's crust. Typically,
faults are associated with, or form, the boundaries
between Earth’s tectonic Plates. In an active fault,
the pieces of the Earth Crust along a fault move over
time. The moving rocks can cause earthquake.
Inactive faults had movement along them at one time,
but no longer move. The type of motion along a fault
depends on the type of fault. The main types of
faults are described below.
A. Normal Dip-Slip Fault
 Normal faults happen in areas where the rocks are
pulling apart (tensile forces) so that the rocky crust
of an area is able to take up more space.
Fig. 3 Reverse Dip-slip Fault
C.
Transform (Strike-Slip) Faults

The movement along a strike slip fault is
horizontal with the block of rock on one side of the
fault moving in one direction and the block of rock
along the other side of the fault moving in the other
direction.

Strike slip faults do not make cliffs or fault
scarps because the blocks of rock are not moving up
or down relative to each other.
IJSRET @ 2012
International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering &Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 1 Issue2 pp 045-048 May 2012
www. ijsret.org
ISSN 2278 – 0882
Fig. 4 Strike-Slip Faults
II.2. Seismic Waves
In earthquake studies, we generally deal with Body
Wave and Surface wave. Body waves travel through
the Earth. P-wave and S-wave are the Body waves.
P-waves are the fastest type of seismic wave. As Pwaves travel, the surrounding rock is repeatedly
compressed and then stretched. P wave is the
primary or the fastest wave travelling away from an
earthquake source. S-waves arrive after P-waves
because they travel more slowly. The rock is shifted
up and down or side to side as the wave travels
through it. S wave is the secondary wave, travelling
more slowly than the P wave and consisting of
elastic vibrations transverse to the direction of travel.
Surface waves travel over the Earth’s surface with a
speed less than the S waves. Rayleigh wave and love
wave are Surface waves. Rayleigh waves, also called
ground roll, travel like ocean waves over the surface
of the Earth, moving the ground surface up and
down. They cause most of the shaking at the ground
surface during an earthquake. Love waves are fast
and move the ground from side to side.
III.
V.
RESULT ANALYSIS
In this work we have simulated a simple model of
earthquake.
Fig. 5 Select a Reference Map
MORE
SENSITIVE
SENSITIVE
LEAST
SENSITIVE
EARTHQUAKE MEASUREMENT
The strength of an earthquake can be measured by a
device called a seismograph. Seismometers are
instruments that measure motions of the ground,
including those of seismic waves generated by
earthquakes. When an earthquake occurs this device
converts the wave energy into a standard unit of
measurement like the Richter scale. In the Richter
scale, units of measurement are referred to as
magnitudes. The Richter scale is logarithmic. Thus,
each unit increase in magnitude represents 10 times
(Energy in joules = 1.74 x 10(5 + 1.44*M)) more
energy released.
IV.
 The application will divide the map into
several equal parts. This division is done of
the basis of the soil properties of the region.
 Every region thus has a particular index.
 We select an epicentre, which sends seismic
waves to near different region similarly a
real earthquake.
 The region effectiveness depends upon the
magnitude of seismic wave and the property
index at that particular region.
 Finally the regions are colored according to
their sensitivity.
The user selects a map of Delhi, and selects an
Epicentre, the origin of the earthquake. As a result of
the simulation, different regions of different
sensitivities are highlighted; red being the most
sensitive region and yellow being the least sensitive
one.
STEPS FOR SIMULATION
 User selects an image of a map.
Fig. 6 Select Epicenter of Earth Quake
IJSRET @ 2012
International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering &Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 1 Issue2 pp 045-048 May 2012
www. ijsret.org
ISSN 2278 – 0882
[3] Phoenix, Arizona “Visualizing Very Large-Scale
Earthquake Simulations” Proceedings of the 2003
ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing, Arizona.
[4] Earthquake engineering handbook by Wai-Fah
Chen, Chaeles Scawthom in 2003.
[5] Geotechnical Earthquake engineering Handbook
by Robert W. Day in 2002.
Fig. 7 Select the place where we find the
distortion factor.
[6] Geotechnical Earthquake engineering by Steven
L. Kramer in 1996.
[7] IGARSS’04.
International.
Proceedings.
2004
IEEE
[8]
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/measure.php
Fig. 8 Color indicates the level of earthquake.
Using the powerful MATLAB tool we were able to
simulate earthquake in addition to getting useful
insights. In particular this work forms a warning
signal for people living in sensitive regions in the
city. Thus administration & government can take
some precautionary measures. This work again
empathizes that studies related to earthquake can get
great befits by simulations; especially by using
MATLAB which provides easy and high level User
Interaction. Thus, encouraging students and
researchers to participate in R & D in EQ
simulations and analysis.
REFERENCES
[1] Chi-Jan Huang; Che-hao Chang; Kuan-Yung
Chang “Uncertainty propagation of Earthquake Loss
Estimation System on the early seismic damage
evaluation” Geoinformatics, 2009 17th International
conference on 12-14Aug,2009.
[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake#History
[10] http://scign.jpl.nasa.gov/learn/eq1.htm
[11] http://www.answers.com/topic/earthquake
[12]
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/geology/qu
ake_1.html
[13]
http://www.cessind.org/earthquakedistributionandty
pes.htm#eqdistrib
[14]
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10
m.html
[15]
http://www.eeri.org/site/?gclid=CJemiYvF56cCFUF
66wodz2QraA
[2]
Xiaoqing Wang, Huicheng Shao “Study on
earthquake losses assessment model considering the
uncertainties of earthquake location and other
factors” Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Symposium, 2004. IGARSS’04. Proceedings. 2004
IEEE International.
IJSRET @ 2012