Abstract: The relationship between the earthquake faulting and tectonic stress was considered in this paper. The results of earthquake mechanism were reviewed. It shows that the fault plane obtained from the fault plane solution agrees well with the surface break caused by the earthquakes,but the fault plane solution does not give good explanation for the orientation of stress, and that an earthquake may be a complex rupture process and the onset of P waves just reflects the initial state of this process.The Coulomb criterion for rock failure was applied to investigate the earthquake faulting. It shows that the angle between the faulting plane and the greatest principal stress is less than or equal to π/4 in the homogeneous and isotropic materials.the result obtained from the fault plane solution can be regarded as a special case for them,μ= 0, i. e. no friction exists. When the material contains preexisting faults or weakened zones, the angle may be distributed in a wide range. It depends on the fracture parameters of the material, such as So, S_w, μ, μ_w as well the intermediant principal stress. Five basic processes of the stress changes which may cause an earthquake are discussed in this paper.

摘要： 本文讨论了地震断裂和构造应力之间的关系。首先综述了地震机制研究的结果,指出断层面解可以给出较好的断层面的取向,而得不到确切的应力场;认为地震是一个复杂的破裂过程,而P波初动只反映了破裂开始的状态。应用了库仑准则对地震断裂进行了讨论,得出在各向同性介质中,最大主应力与断层面的夹角α≤45°,断层面解只是它的一个特例,μ=0,即没有内摩擦,或相当于围压很高的岩石试验结果;在软弱面存在的情况下,断裂面与最大主应力的夹角可以分布在更大的范围内,可以大于45°,也可以小于45°,这范围取决于破裂参数S_w,μ_w以及中等主应力σ₂。讨论了震前应力变化的过程,指出了五种基本可能引起地震的过程。