Cascading elastic perturbation in Japan due to the 2012 Mw 8.6 Indian Ocean earthquake

Since the discovery of extensive earthquake triggering occurring in response to the 1992 Mw (moment magnitude) 7.3 Landers earthquake, it is now well established that seismic waves from earthquakes can trigger other earthquakes, tremor, slow slip, and pore pressure changes. Our contention is that earthquake triggering is one manifestation of a more widespread elastic disturbance that reveals information about Earth’s stress state. Earth’s stress state is central to our understanding of both natural and anthropogenic-induced crustal processes. We show that seismic waves from distant earthquakes may perturb stresses and frictional properties on faults and elastic moduli of the crust in cascading fashion. Transient dynamic stresses place crustal material into a metastable state during which the material recovers through a process termed slow dynamics. This observation of widespread, dynamically induced elastic perturbation, including systematic migration of offshore seismicity, strain transients, and velocity transients, presents a new characterization of Earth’s elastic system that will advance our understanding of plate tectonics, seismicity, and seismic hazards.

A Step Forward in the Understanding of the Strain Reversal Effect on the Recrystallization Kinetics after Hot Working

A reversion of the strain produces a modification of the static recrystallization kinetics. Initially, the reversion increases the recrystallization time, that reaches a maximum at a certain strain, and decreases again for increasing reverse strains. This transient on recrystallization kinetics develops over a strain interval similar to that of the microstructural and stress-strain transients. At strains beyond the transient, the reversion can be regarded as a shift on the strain axis. However, at the authors knowledge there is no formulation able to describe the material behaviour during the transient. The present work introduces an equivalent strain concept based on the substructural dissolution/build-up processes taking place as a result of the strain reversal. This formulation allows including the effect of the strain path on recrystallization models.