Temporal variation of soil gas compositions for earthquake surveillance in Taiwan

The present study is proposed to investigate temporal variations of soil–gas composition in the vicinity of different fault zones in Taiwan. To carry out the investigations, variations of soil–gases compositions were measured at continuous earthquake monitoring stations along Hsincheng and Hsinhua faults in Hsinchu and Tainan areas, respectively. Before selecting a monitoring site, the occurrence of deeper gas emanation was investigated by the soil–gas surveys and followed by continuous monitoring of some selected sites with respect to tectonic activity to check the sensitivity of the sites. Based on the results of long term geochemical monitoring at the established monitoring stations we can divide the studied area in two different tectonic zones. We proposed tectonic based model for earthquake forecasting in Taiwan and tested it for some big earthquakes occurred during observation period i.e. 2009–2010. Based on the anomalous signatures from particular monitoring stations we are in a state to identify the area for impending earthquakes of magnitude ≥5 and we have tested it for some earthquakes which rocked the country during that period. It can be concluded from above results that the stress/strain transmission for a particular earthquake is hindered by different tectonic settings of the region under study.     

The diversity of the physics of earthquakes

Earthquakes exhibit diverse characteristics. Most shallow earthquakes are “brittle” in the sense that they excite seismic waves efficiently. However, some earthquakes are slow, as characterized by tsunami earthquakes and even slower events without any obvious seismic radiation. Also, some earthquakes, like the 1994 Bolivian deep earthquake, involved a large amount of fracture and thermal energy and may be more appropriately called a thermal event, rather than an earthquake. Some earthquakes are caused by processes other than faulting, such as landslides. This diversity can be best understood in terms of the difference in the partition of the released potential energy to radiated, fracture, and thermal energies during an earthquake. This approach requires detailed studies on quantification of earthquakes and estimation of various kinds of energies involved in earthquake processes. This paper reviews the progress in this field from historical and personal points of view and discusses its implications for earthquake damage mitigation.     

Microwave stimulation of plasticity in an earthquake source

It is suggested to stimulate the slow relaxation of elastic energy of deformation stress in an earth-quake source by microwave radiation, which intensifies the motion of dislocations, decreases the yield limit, and increases the plasticity. This phenomenon, known in solid-state physics as magnetoplasticity, can be used to retain an earthquake source far from the critical regime capable of developing into a catastrophic earth-quake by stimulating a slow relaxation of the source. The available evidence for the influence of magnetic storms on the dynamics of earthquakes is generally consistent with the concept of stimulated magnetoplasticity as a means of preventing catastrophic earthquakes, proposed in the present communication.     

Rock Mass as a Nonlinear Dynamic System. Mathematical Modeling of Stress-Strain State Evolution in the Rock Mass around a Mine Opening

The paper briefly reviews the fundamental (general) evolution properties of nonlinear dynamic systems. The stress-strain state evolution in a rock mass with mine openings has been numerically modeled, including the catastrophic stage of roof failure. The results of modeling the catastrophic failure of rock mass elements are analyzed in the framework of the theory of nonlinear dynamic systems. Solutions of solid mechanics equations are shown to exhibit all characteristic features of nonlinear dynamic system evolution, such as dynamic chaos, self-organized criticality, and catastrophic superfast stress-strain state evolution at the final stage of failure. The calculated seismic events comply with the Gutenberg-Richter law. The cut-off effect has been obtained in numerical computation (downward bending of the recurrence curve in the region of large-scale failure events). Prior to catastrophic failure, change of the probability density functions of stress fluctuations, related to the average trend, occurs, the slope of the recurrence curve of calculated seismic events becomes more gentle, seismic quiescence regions form in the central zones of the roof, and more active deformation begins at the periphery of the opening. These factors point to the increasing probability of a catastrophic event and can be considered as catastrophic failure precursors.     

Soil radon time series: Surveys in seismic and volcanic areas

Soil radon surveys have been performed in a long term monitoring basis with SSNTD (LR 115 type II), in order to observe possible fluctuations due to high magnitude seismic events and volcanic eruptions. Five-year radon time series are available in stations located in an intense seismic zone located along the Pacific coast of Mexico. The series analyses have been performed as a function of the local seismicity and geological characteristics. A discussion is intended to explain the lack of biunivocal relation between single radon peaks and earthquakes for the long term monitoring data using SSNTDs. Examples of short term radon anomalies obtained with continuous probes are also discussed as a function of local earthquakes and meteorological perturbations. Additionally, complementary results from recent changes in the activity pattern of an active volcano indicate that degassing process induced anomalous soil radon emanation correlated with the volcanic activity changes.     

Blow-up Modes in Fracture of Rock Samples and Earth’s Crust Elements

It is well known that the final stage of macroscopic fracture develops as a catastrophe in a superfast blow-up mode. However, the specific features of this stage are well studied only on large scales of earthquakes. Of particular interest for fracture prediction are both the stage of superfast catastrophic fracture and the mechanical behavior of the medium in the state of self-organized criticality prior to transition of fracture to the blow-up mode in order to reveal precursors of fracture transition to the catastrophic stage. This paper studies experimentally and theoretically the mechanical behavior of the medium prior to the catastrophic stage and transition to the blow-up mode. Rock samples (marble and artificial marble) were tested in three-point bending and uniaxial compression tests. The lateral surface velocities of loaded samples were recorded using a laser Doppler vibrometer. The recording frequency in measurements was 48 kHz, and the determination accuracy of the velocity amplitude was 0.1 μm/s. The estimated duration of the blow-up fracture stage is 10–20 ms. The mechanical behavior of samples in the experimental conditions, including the catastrophic fracture stage, is simulated numerically. The damage accumulation model parameters are determined from a comparison with the experimental data. Certain features of the mechanical response prior to catastrophic fracture are revealed which can be interpreted as fracture precursors.     

Cascading failures and the emergence of cooperation in evolutionary-game based models of social and economical networks

We study catastrophic behaviors in large networked systems in the paradigm of evolutionary games by incorporating a realistic "death" or "bankruptcy" mechanism. We find that a cascading bankruptcy process can arise when defection strategies exist and individuals are vulnerable to deficit. Strikingly, we observe that, after the catastrophic cascading process terminates, cooperators are the sole survivors, regardless of the game types and of the connection patterns among individuals as determined by the topology of the underlying network. It is necessary that individuals cooperate with each other to survive the catastrophic failures. Cooperation thus becomes the optimal strategy and absolutely outperforms defection in the game evolution with respect to the "death" mechanism. Our results can be useful for understanding large-scale catastrophe in real-world systems and in particular, they may yield insights into significant social and economical phenomena such as large-scale failures of financial institutions and corporations during an economic recession.     

Extreme events and predictability of catastrophic failure in composite materials and in the Earth

Despite all attempts to isolate and predict extreme earthquakes, these nearly always occur without obvious warning in real time: fully deterministic earthquake prediction is very much a ‘black swan’. On the other hand engineering-scale samples of rocks and other composite materials often show clear precursors to dynamic failure under controlled conditions in the laboratory, and successful evacuations have occurred before several volcanic eruptions. This may be because extreme earthquakes are not statistically special, being an emergent property of the process of dynamic rupture. Nevertheless, probabilistic forecasting of event rate above a given size, based on the tendency of earthquakes to cluster in space and time, can have significant skill compared to say random failure, even in real-time mode. We address several questions in this debate, using examples from the Earth (earthquakes, volcanoes) and the laboratory, including the following. How can we identify ‘characteristic’ events, i.e. beyond the power law, in model selection (do dragon-kings exist)? How do we discriminate quantitatively between stationary and non-stationary hazard models (is a dragon likely to come soon)? Does the system size (the size of the dragon’s domain) matter? Are there localising signals of imminent catastrophic failure we may not be able to access (is the dragon effectively invisible on approach)? We focus on the effect of sampling effects and statistical uncertainty in the identification of extreme events and their predictability, and highlight the strong influence of scaling in space and time as an outstanding issue to be addressed by quantitative studies, experimentation and models.     

Strain and texture measurements on geological samples using neutron diffraction at IBR-2, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research,Dubna (Russia)

Information on texture and residual stress in geological samples is very important for the calculation of physical properties connected with the evaluation of the geomechanical behavior of parts of the earths’s crust in connection with processes from human activities (mining, tunnelling) and natural processes of deformation (seismicity, earthquakes). Texture and stress are not independent of each other and in the general case should be analyzed together. Complications arise because geological samples are generally composed of several phases (minerals) whose elastic constants may be significantly different. Nevertheless, modern neutron diffractometers such as SKAT and EPSILON-MDS at the fast pulsed reactor IBR-2 at the FLNP of the JINR make it possible to obtain the needed diffraction patterns. This was shown especially for texture measurements on samples with quartz as the main component as well as for mica, feldspar, amphibole, and several other minerals. In order to extend strain measurements beyond samples composed of quartz, dolomite, and/or anhydrite to such frequently occurring minerals as feldspars and mica it would be necessary on the one hand to use Rietveld refinement with corrections due to texture and anisotropic peak broadening. With an increase in the number of mineral phases suitable for these diffractometers, it is in general necessary to improve the experimental conditions for SKAT and EPSILON-MDS, especially to significantly raise the flux of incident neutrons on the sample.     

Infrared thermography for condition monitoring – A review

Temperature is one of the most common indicators of the structural health of equipment and components. Faulty machineries, corroded electrical connections, damaged material components, etc., can cause abnormal temperature distribution. By now, infrared thermography (IRT) has become a matured and widely accepted condition monitoring tool where the temperature is measured in real time in a non-contact manner. IRT enables early detection of equipment flaws and faulty industrial processes under operating condition thereby, reducing system down time, catastrophic breakdown and maintenance cost. Last three decades witnessed a steady growth in the use of IRT as a condition monitoring technique in civil structures, electrical installations, machineries and equipment, material deformation under various loading conditions, corrosion damages and welding processes. IRT has also found its application in nuclear, aerospace, food, paper, wood and plastic industries. With the advent of newer generations of infrared camera, IRT is becoming a more accurate, reliable and cost effective technique. This review focuses on the advances of IRT as a non-contact and non-invasive condition monitoring tool for machineries, equipment and processes. Various conditions monitoring applications are discussed in details, along with some basics of IRT, experimental procedures and data analysis techniques. Sufficient background information is also provided for the beginners and non-experts for easy understanding of the subject.     

Continuous radon monitoring in soil gas towards earthquake precursory studies in basaltic region

The Koyna-Warna region, near the west coast of India, is well known for reservoir-triggered seismicity. The seismic activity in this region greatly increased following the construction of an artificial reservoir across the Koyna River during the 1960s. A destructive earthquake of M 6.3 occurred on December 10, 1967, and further 19 earthquakes of M>5 have been recorded during the preceding 40 years until 2007. The soil gas radon (²²²Rn) has been studied as an earthquake precursor by continuous monitoring (hourly) at two sites around the Warna reservoir. One site has a multi-sensor probe (installed at three different depths), together with a rainfall recording facility, and another probe is mounted on a hillock at Nivle. During the study period (2005–2007), a total of 11 earthquakes (including 2 aftershocks) of M 4–4.8 were recorded. Most of these events had recorded precursory radon signals. For a given earthquake, the ²²²Rn precursory signatures were recorded at one of the two sites only. Even multiple depth probes showed discordant behaviour in recording temporal Rn variation. Causes of non-concurrence in Rn recording between sites and probes, including the combined effect of site heterogeneity, focal depth, epicentral distance, earthquake magnitude, faults responsible for the earthquake, etc, are discussed.     

Infrasound signal classification based on spectral entropy and support vector machine

The operation speed of the algorithm is the critical factor in the real-time monitoring of infrasound signals. The existing methods mainly focus on how to improve the accuracy of classification and can’t be used in real time monitoring because of their slow running speed. We adopt spectral entropy into the feature extraction of infrasound signals. Combined with the support vector machine algorithm, the proposed method effectively extracted the signal features meanwhile greatly improved the operation efficiency. Experimental results show that the running speed of the proposed method is 1.0 s, which is far less than 4.7 s of the comparison method. So the proposed method can be applied in real-time monitoring of earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and other infrasound events.     

Acoustic tomography of dynamic processes in a sea shelf zone with the use of complex signals

Experimental data are presented on the use of single receiving and transmitting systems in acoustic tomography of dynamic processes in a shallow sea. The experiments are based on the use of the transmission tomography and opposite-direction sounding with complex phase-manipulated signals. The original data are those obtained by the authors in 1990–2000 on the shelf of the Sea of Japan near the Gamov Peninsula, in the vicinity of the acoustical-hydrophysical experimental site of the Pacific Oceanological Institute. A possibility of using combined transmitting-receiving systems (transceivers) for monitoring the temperature and fields of currents in the ocean is demonstrated.     

Earthquake forecast via neutrino tomography

We discuss the possibility of forecasting earthquakes by means of (anti)neutrino tomography. An- tineutrinos emitted from reactors are used as a probe. As the antineutrinos traverse through a region prone to earthquakes, observable variations in the matter effect on the antineutrino oscillation would provide a tomog- raphy of the vicinity of the region. In this preliminary work, we adopt a simplified model for the geometrical profile and matter density in a fault zone. We calculate the survival probability of electron antineutrinos for cases without and with an anomalous accumulation of electrons which can be considered as a clear signal of the coming earthquake, at the geological region with a fault zone, and find that the variation may reach as much as 3% for ν<,e> emitted from a reactor. The case for a ν<,e> beam from a neutrino factory is also investigated, and it is noted that, because of the typically high energy associated with such neutrinos, the oscillation length is too large and the resultant variation is not practically observable. Our conclusion is that with the present reactor facilities and detection techniques, it is still a difficult task to make an earthquake forecast using such a scheme, though it seems to be possible from a theoretical point of view while ignoring some uncertainties. However, with the development of the geology, especially the knowledge about the fault zone, and with the improvement of the detection techniques, etc., there is hope that a medium-term earthquake forecast would be feasible.     

Cellular neural networks for welding arc thermograms segmentation

Machine vision systems are used in many areas for monitoring of technological processes. Among this processes welding takes important place, where often infrared cameras are used. Besides reliable hardware, successful application of vision systems requires suitable software based on proper algorithms. One of most important group of image processing algorithms is connected to image segmentation. Obtainment of exact boundary of an object that changes shape in time, such as the welding arc, represented on a thermogram is not a trivial task. In the paper a segmentation method using supervised approach based on a cellular neural networks is presented. Simulated annealing and genetic algorithm were used for training of the network (template optimization). Comparison of proposed method to a well elaborated segmentation method based on region growing approach was made. Obtained results prove that the cellular neural network can be a valuable tool for infrared welding pool images segmentation.     

Optical fiber FBG linear sensing systems for the on-line monitoring of airborne high temperature air duct leakage

Electrical sensing systems, such as those involving eutectic salt, are mostly used in connection to leakage from existing airborne high-temperature air-conducting pipelines. Such complex structured systems are susceptible to external interferences and, thus, cannot meet the increasingly strict monitoring needs of a complex air-conducting pipeline system of an aircraft. In view of this point, this paper studies an alternative sensor system based on a dense array fiber grating. To obtain a compact and light-weight airborne signal processing system, a field programmable gate array is used as the main control core that controls the output of the light source. The functions of pulse modulation, analog-to-digital conversion, data buffering and transmission are integrated into a single system, while the linear sensing monitoring is obtained by detecting the time-division and wavelength-division wavelength drift signals of the fiber Bragg grating array. Our experiments show that the spatial resolution of the linear sensing system approaches 5 cm, the temperature measurement accuracy reaches 2 ℃, the temperature measurement range is between 0-250 ℃, and the response time is within 4 s. Compared with the existing electrical monitoring systems, various monitoring indicators have been greatly improved and have broad application prospects.     

Specific features of ionospheric total electron content variations in the periods of preparation of the earthquakes on March 11, 2011 (Japan) and October 23, 2011 (Turkey)

The main morphological features of variations of the total electron content (TEC) of the ionosphere before the earthquakes on March 11, 2011 (Japan) and October 23, 2011 (Turkey) are examined. The revealed features are compared to those of ionospheric TEC disturbances observed prior to several other large seismic events, as well as to those included in a list of the most frequently observed ionospheric TEC disturbances interpreted as possible ionospheric precursors of earthquakes. It is shown that, in the periods of preparation of the earthquakes under consideration, on March 8–11 and October 20–23, abnormal ionospheric TEC disturbances were observed as long-lived structures in a near-epicentral region and in the region magnetically conjugated to it.     

视频车辆监控系统图像滤波算法的研究

视频车辆监控系统中图像噪声对背景学习、车辆识别等具有很大影响,已有滤波算法又难以满足系统对滤波效果和速度的综合要求。通过对比不滤波、采用中值滤波或均值滤波时的车辆识别效果和速度,选用均值滤波作为进一步的研究对象。在适当减少计算量的基础上,通过改进数据访问方法和计算方法进一步提高了算法速度,并用Visual C++ 6.0实现了该算法。实验表明,新算法的速度比盒滤波提高了55 %。     

Investigations on the Capability of the Statistical Extinction Method for the Determination of Mean Particle Sizes in Concentrated Particle Systems

Due to the fast growing number of processes involving particulate systems, simple and robust measurement techniques which enable an inline monitoring of the particle size and their concentration are urgently required, since this ensures control but also process optimization. In this work, an inline measurement technique based on the statistical extinction method is developed that provides a process monitoring for a wide range of particulate processes, such as dispersion processes and spray processes. The method allows the determination of the mean size and concentration for particle systems with the size larger than 1 µm. For this purpose, a light beam illuminates the particle system, whereby the fluctuating light intensity due to the particle movement through the light beam is detected. The statistical fluctuation of the signal can be related to a mean particle size and a particle concentration. Since concentrated particle systems cause effects that additionally influence the signal, such as multiple scattering, approaches are needed to reduce or eliminate these effects. In this work, an approach using a spatial frequency filter is applied. The experimental investigations reveal that the effects can be significantly reduced with the spatial frequency filter.