Earthquake prediction and correlation between rock mass acoustic emission and seismic activity

To study the feasibility of acoustic emission (AE)technology for earthquake prediction,the AE system and seismometer were arranged in the granite underground tunnel to conduct AE and seismic monitoring simultaneously. The temporal correlation between AE and seismic activity during the 35 d monitoring period was analyzed by multimodal statistical method,and the evolution of the b-value and natural-time variance κ1 of AE time series was observed. Experimental results show that the change of AE characteristics including the burst indicates the approach of the major earthquake,with its dense burst being closely related to the nearby major earthquakes of magnitude 3. 2 and 2. 4. Approaching the major earthquake occurrence,the b-value shows a continuous dropping till it reaches the minimum b-value below 1,whereas the natural-time variance decreases rapidly from 0. 07 to a minimum value close to zero. The changing trend of AE temporal distributions obtained by multimodal statistical method is earlier than that of seismic activity,anticipating the major earthquake event about 17 h in advance. Therefore,AE has a strong correlation with seismic activity and can be used as earthquake precursors. The measured results provide the possibility and observational evidence for the use of AE in earthquake prediction. © 2024 Southeast University. All rights reserved.