Fault Geometry and Departure of Precursors From the Epicenter

Different tectonic elements may play different roles and their deformation styles and types of anomalies are also different in the process of deformation.Such differences may be the cause of the phenomena of the departure from the region with obvious anomalies from the coming epicenter,which are called "departure of precursors from epicenter." From some new experimental and numerical modeling results,five types of deformation elements are identified according to their roles in the process of deformation in a region.They are the brake(or locked),slip,yield,sensitive,and valve elements.Spatial distribution of different elements,especially sensitive and slip elements,are discussed by taking the bend fault,extension,compression,and complex en-echelon faults as examples.These elements with different roles may overlap each other in some cases or be separated in other cases.It is obvious that for different fault geometry,the spatial layout of these elements is different and thus the position and style of possible sensitive elements are also different.Understanding the relationship may help us with arranging the observation network and defining the position of possible events when anomalies appeared.