The faulting characteristics of 2008 Wenchuan Ms8.0 earthquake and its relation with strong ground motion

The 2008 MS8 Wenchuan earthquake occurs on a high angle listric thrust fault. It is the first time that the near and far field strong ground motion was observed for such special type thrust earthquake. This paper jointly interprets the distribution of peak acceleration of ground motion data with seismogenic structure and slip propagating process to investigate how high angle listric thrust fault controls the pattern of strong ground motion. We found that the distribution of peak acceleration of strong ground motion during the Wenchuan earthquake has four distinctive features: 1)The peak acceleration of ground motion inside the Longmenshan fault zone is large, that is, nearly twice as strong as that outside the fault zone; 2)This earthquake produces significant vertical ground motion, prevailing against horizontal components in the near field; 3)The far field records show that the peak acceleration is generally higher and attenuates slower versus station-fault distance in the hanging wall. It is doubtful that the attenuation of horizontal components also has the hanging wall effect since no evidence yet proving that the unexpected high value at long distance need be omitted; 4)As to the attenuation in directions parallel to the source fault(Yingxiu-Beichuan Fault), the far field records also exhibit azimuthal heterogeneity that the peak acceleration of horizontal components decreases slower in the north-northeastern direction in which the co-seismic slip propagates than that in the backward way. However, the attenuation of vertical component displays very weak heterogeneity of this kind. Synthetically considered with shallow dislocation, high dip angle, and prevailing vertical deformation during co-seismic process of the Wenchuan earthquake, our near and far field ground motion records reflect the truth that the magnitude of ground motion is principally determined by slip type of earthquake and actual distance between the slipping source patches and stations. As a further interpretation, the uniqueness of high angle listric thrust results in that the ground motion effects of the Wenchuan earthquake are similar to that due to a common thrust earthquake in some components while differ in the others. © 2015, Editorial Office of Seismology and Geology. All right reserved.