A NEW APPROACH TO EARTHQUAKE PREDICTION---LOAD/UNLOAD RESPONSE RATIO (LURR) THEORY

From the viewpoint of mechanics, the essence of seismogenic process is thedamage evolution of the focal media, so it is mainly a mechanical process.But the earthquake prediction is different from other mechanicsproblems inengineering. The constitutive law, boundary condition, initial condition andthe history of some mechanics quantities (such as rheology) must be known in aresolvable mechanics problem in engineering. But in earthquake generationthey are unknown or almost unknown, and only the variation of some physicalquantities in the earth crust can be measured. From this consideration, theconcept of load/unload response ratio (LURR) was proposed as a new approachto earthquake prediction. In this paper the basic concepts, case-examinationand some new results of LURR are introduced.