Faulting by the 2023 great earthquakes of Türkiye and associated stress field and its effects on built environment
Authors: Aydan Ömer , Ulusay Reşat , Kumsar Halil 
Published: November 2024

Background

Faulting induced by earthquakes and its analysis are of great importance for areas with high probability of earthquakes. However, there has been no particularly effective methods to evaluate the damage and applicable solutions for recovery. In this paper, the damage from Türkiye earthquakes is investigated by authors, which has important theoretical significance and practical value. On 6 February, 2023, two successive earthquakes with magnitudes (Mw) of 7.8 (called Pazarcık earthquake) and 7.6 (Ekinözü earthquake) occurred in the south-eastern part of Türkiye. The total length of the surface ruptures was more than 500 km long and resulted in striations reflecting the sinistral faulting and extensive ground deformations. In this study, the authors present the outcomes of the investigations on the surface ruptures, their characteristics, stress field associated with both earthquakes, shear strength property of fault segments and the damaging effects on various structures and made some recommendations with the purpose of how to build structures in active fault zones and decrease the negative effects of faulting on structures.

Results

Besides summarizing the main characteristics of the world-shaking Kahramanmaraş earthquake doublet in southeast Türkiye in 2023, this study described the main features of the surface ruptures, their relation to the inferred crustal stresses in Türkiye, and the damaging effects on the major engineering structures. The observations and inferences are of great significance for understanding the causes of earthquakes and future seismic risk assessment. Various laboratory experiments were performed on the samples of fault gouge gathered from the sites of surface ruptures and these experimental results provided very valuable quantitative information on the constitutive models of the fault zones. The observations clearly showed that it is almost impossible to prevent damage on structures due to surface ruptures, if certain engineering principles such as increasing higher ductility, lowering gravitational center and/or the implementations of raft foundations are followed.

Conclusions

The stress state inferences obtained from the striation of the fault surface ruptures as well as from the focal plane solutions are expected to be useful to evaluate the regional stress state of the earthquake region. Assessments indicated that the stress states in Arabian plate and Anadolu platelet are different from each other. However, in-situ direct stress measurement techniques would be quite useful to validate the stress state inferred in this study. The laboratory experiments on samples gathered from the fault outcrops of the earthquakes using direct shear tests, stick-slip tests as well as conventional tensile, compressive and triaxial tests provided the quantitative values for the parameters of constitutive laws for fault zones, which can be utilized in the numerical simulation of earthquakes. If a fault break happens to be just passing underneath the structures, it is almost impossible for mankind to prevent the damage to structures. However, the authors made some recommendations to reduce the negative effects of fault ruptures on structures. These recommendations are such that the structures should be built as ductile and redundant structures with lower center of gravity and raft foundations. Dam construction should be on active faults should be avoided. If they are to be built for whatever reason, they should be of rock-fill type. As tubular structures and tunnels would be generally subjected forced displacement field, it is recommended to utilize flexible joints, segmented and enlargement to deal such displacement fields.