Faults and Earthquakes - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 183

6.2 CRUSTAL INTERPLATE EARTHQUAKE
6.2.1 Crustal Interplate Earthquake Types
The crustal interplate earthquake has its source at the convergent and transformed
boundaries of the Earth's crust, under form of collision, subduction or strike-slip
earthquakes (Fig. 6.3) (Gioncu, 2006, Gioncu and Mazzolani, 2003, 2006).
6.2.2 Crustal Subduction Earthquakes
Crustal subduction earthquakes occur in the zones where the oceanic plate is
colliding with and descending beneath the continental plate. Therefore, this
earthquake type always occurs along continental coasts and is the most important
source of the world's earthquakes, because crustal subduction is the cause of the
majority of the produced earthquakes. The Earth's largest earthquakes occur in
these subduction zones. At the margin of the Pacific Ocean, along the Ring of Fire,
where these earthquakes occur frequently, hundreds of millions of people and
trillions of dollars of economical infrastructure are at risk from these earthquakes.
(a)
(b)
Figure 6.3 Crustal interplate earthquake types: (a) Subduction; (b) Strike-slip
(Gioncu, 2006)