13th International Conference on Fracture June 16–21, 2013, Beijing, China -6- the Kunlun Mountain Fault at 17 hours and 26 minutes and 14.7 seconds (Beijing time) in the afternoon of November 14, 2011. The epicenter was at (35.6°N, 94.1°E). The focal depth was 15 km. The total duration was about 120 seconds. It released a huge amount of energy and made the grand Kunlun Mountains rupturing and slipping. The released radiated seismic strain energy ES might be 8.9×1016 Joule. It resulted in a surface rupture zone in the south slope of Kunlun Mountains. The seismic surface rupture zone was 426 km in total length and several hundred meters in width (as shown in Figure 2). On November 16, 2001, a group of scientists from China Seismological Bureau went to the epicenter area for seismological and damage investigation. They observed that the ground deformation and destruction were serious and great in scale. Their widths varied from several tens meters to several thousand meters along the 426 km long surface rupture zone. The maximum left-lateral displacement was 6 to 7 m. 4.2. Ruptured permafrost soils and ice The Kunlun Mountain is part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a region of the largest-scale tectonic uplift. The ground elevations along the seismic surface rupture zone were about 4600 m to 5000 m above the sea level. The grounds that were ruptured by the seismic fault movement were dominantly permafrost grounds. Ice layers covered on the rivers were also ruptured. Album showing the seismic surface ruptures and destruction was published by China Seismological Bureau [17]. It contains 140 colored photographs showing the seismic rupture zone from the west to the east. Two photographs 18 and 58 from the Album [17] are represented in Figures 3 and 4, respectively. Their locations are identified in Figure 2. Figure 3. A tent-shaped mole track typical of the frozen soil layer with a height of 2 m, north of Wuxue Peak (after photograph 18 of [17]) From the site photograph 18 in Figure 3, it can be evidently observed that the frozen soil layer was largely uplifted, bended and then cracked in tension and shear. The broken frozen soil layer was relatively rigid. Their fractured sides and edges were fresh, sharp and angular. There were no signs
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