The systematical experiments carried out by Gómez-Rivas and Griera(2012) demonstrate that the ductile shear zones initiate at ~55° to ?1 just as predicted by the MEM-criterion. However, the data are explained in terms of dilatancy, which requires many prerequisites and implies that the ±55° angle is only valid for the used material. In contrast, the ~55? predicted by the MEM-criterion is material independent, which makes it widely applicable to explaining the development of ductile shear zones in nature.
Before the major earthquake or rock damage occurs,it is often accompanied by a sudden change in the degree of non-uniformity of the strain field.In order to find a stronger non-uniformity signal before the rock failure,the coefficient of variation(Cv)is examined and reformed in this study.We test the Cv calculation way of the"normal-abnormal"model proposed in the previous studies.Based on the analysis of the physical process of rock failure and its relationship to the shear strain field,we construct a new way to calculate the Cv value.The variation of shear strain field on rock sample with the increase of stress is obtained by the digital speckle correlation method(DSCM).The new Cv value calculation way is used to study the non-uniformity of the spatial distribution for the shear strain field.The results show that this Cv calculation way can get more obvious abnormal signals.When the number of observation points are limited,the specific distribution of points can increase the signal strength,which may provide reference for the research on precursor detection of earthquakes.
