Crustal stress and faulting

Stress is the cause of either acceleration of a body or deformation of a continuous medium. In the brittle part of the crust it thus is the cause of deformation, a large part of which is expressed as fault movements. These fault movements may be recorded either by structural measurements on outcrops or by focal mechanisms of earthquakes. The relationship between fault movements and state of stress can be approached through two complementary ways.

If the state of stress is known, it can be used to predict whether a fault is stable or not, and how its slip will be oriented. Mathematically, this corresponds to a direct problem where both state of stress and fault orientation are known and the stress applied to the fault is sought.

Conversely, faults movements can be used to determine the state of stress that activated them. Mathematically, this corresponds to an inverse problem where fault and slip orientations are known and the state of stress that activated them is sought. A review of this approach and its historical development can be found in Célérier et al. (2012).

Contributions to this relationship are organized around four approaches:

• theory,
• methods,
• software, and
• data analysis.

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