A primary tectonic and seismic motivating force: discovery and verification

Abstract

This paper presents the theoretical background which in 1965 led the senior author to the conception of a primary tectonic. motivating force and numerical results that portray its action in particular models which depict the mechanical constitution of the earth in various orders of nonuniformity. These numerical results consistently conform with the stresses which both in configuration and magnitude are necessary to account for the seismicity of certain known seismically active regions of.the earth. This primary motivating force is linked with the mechanical evolution of the earth and evidently is the primary motivator of essentially all mechanical phenomena produced in the earth. The conditions on the mechanical constitution of the earth necessary to produce this force and to sustain it in geological time are essentially equivalent to the conditions which were logically inferred in 1951* from a phenomenological description of the seismic process, namely that the earth must necessarily be:
1. nonuniform in mechanical constitution
2. inelastic
3. at least partially maxwellian-inelastic.