Course10510522557 lectures
Earthquake Seismology
Prof. Mohit Agrawal · IIT-ISM Dhanbad
About
Earthquakes are fascinating natural phenomena for the students who seek to understand the Earth's structure and composition. This course aims to introduce students to these phenomena through an introduction to seismology, a fundamental aspect of modern earth sciences. Seismology is defined as the study of earthquakes and related phenomena, or the study of elastic waves propagating through the Earth. By integrating techniques and data from physics, mathematics, and geology, seismology provides a remarkably detailed picture of the Earth's interior.
This subject is highly valuable for mineralogists and petrologists studying the Earth's composition, students of tectonics interested in lithospheric processes, geologists exploring the nature and evolution of the crust, engineers concerned with seismic hazards, and planetologists studying the evolution of terrestrial planets.
Upon completing this course, students will be able to explain the general concepts of earthquake seismology and its societal implications. They will understand the main components of seismology—source, path, and receiver. They will be able to demonstrate how earthquake mechanisms are derived from waveform data and discuss the basics of seismic attenuation and how earthquake observations lead to improved Earth models.
In this NPTEL course, I will provide PowerPoint presentations, assignments, and homework, along with lecture notes. We will refer to the textbook "An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes, and Earth Structure" by Seth Stein and Michael Wysession, published by Blackwell. The provided videos, lecture notes, and PPTs will be sufficient to understand every topic covered in this course.
Intended audience: Anyone from geophysics, physics, engineering, geology, earthquake engineering, earth sciences, geosciences, earth and atmospheric science having interest in learning
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of Physics and Mathematics
Lectures
Week 1
- Lecture 01 : Introduction
- Lecture 02 : Waves on a String
- Lecture 03 : Stress
- Lecture 04 : Strain tensor and Constitutive equations
- Lecture 05 : Equations of Motion
Week 2
- Lecture 06 : Wavenumber vector, Slowness, P-and S-wave Polarization
- Lecture 07 : Seismic spectrum, Seismogram rotation, Spherical Waves
- Lecture 08 : Energy in the Plane Wave, Potentials at an Interface
- Lecture 09 : Boundary Conditions, Types Of Interfaces, Ray Theory, Reflection/Transmission
- Lecture 10 : Snell’s law, Transmission and Reflection Coefficients, Fermat’s Principle, Huygen’s Principle
- Lecture 11 : Precritical, Critical, and Postcritical waves, reflection and transmission coefficients
Week 3
- Lecture 12 : Surface waves
- Lecture 13 : Rayleigh Waves
- Lecture 14 : Love waves
- Lecture 15 : Dispersion
- Lecture 16 : Dispersion example in the Earth and Tsunamis
Week 4
- Lecture 17 : Normal modes
- Lecture 18 : Torsional and Spheroidal Modes , Splitting , Normal modes Synthetic Seismogram
- Lecture 19 : Solving numerical problems
Week 5
- Lecture 20 : Refraction seismology
- Lecture 21 : Refraction seismology (Contd.)
- Lecture 22 : Reflection seismology (Contd.)
- Lecture 23 : Earth as a constant velocity Distribution
- Lecture 24 : Multi Channel Data Geometry
Week 6
- Lecture 25 : Seismic waves in spherical earth
- Lecture 26 : Velocity distribution
- Lecture 27 : Body waves
- Lecture 28 : Core Phases
- Lecture 29 : Velocity structure of upper mantle and lower mantle
Week 7
- Lecture 30 : Anisotropic earth structure
- Lecture 31 : Anisotropic earth structure (Contd.)
- Lecture 32 : Attenuation and Anelasticity
- Lecture 33 : Attenuation and Anelasticity (Contd.)
- Lecture 34 : Attenuation and Anelasticity (Contd.)
Week 8
- Lecture 35 : Composition of the mantle and core
- Lecture 36 : Composition of the mantle and core (Contd.)
- Lecture 37 : Composition of the mantle and core (Contd.)
- Lecture 38 : Composition of the mantle and core (Contd.)
Week 9
- Lecture 39 : Earthquakes, focal mechanisms, moment tensors
- Lecture 40 : Earthquakes, focal mechanisms, moment tensors (Contd.)
- Lecture 41 : Earthquakes, focal mechanisms, moment tensors (Contd.)
- Lecture 42 : Earthquakes, focal mechanisms, moment tensors (Contd.)
- Lecture 43 : Earthquakes, focal mechanisms, moment tensors (Contd.)
Week 10
- Lecture 44 : Brief on Earthquake geodesy
- Lecture 45 : Brief on Earthquake geodesy (Contd.)
- Lecture 46 : Brief on Earthquake geodesy (Contd.)
- Lecture 47 : Brief on Earthquake geodesy (Contd.)
Week 11
- Lecture 48 : Source parameters, Earthquake statistics
- Lecture 49 : Source parameters, Earthquake statistics (Contd.)
- Lecture 50 : Source parameters, Earthquake statistics (Contd.)
- Lecture 51 : Source parameters, Earthquake statistics (Contd.)
- Lecture 52 : Source parameters, Earthquake statistics (Contd.)
Week 12
- Lecture 53 : Seismology and Plate tectonics, Spreading centers, Subduction zones
- Lecture 54 : Seismology and Plate tectonics, Spreading centers, Subduction zones (Contd.)
- Lecture 55 : Seismology and Plate tectonics, Spreading centers, Subduction zones (Contd.)
- Lecture 56 : Numerical Problems in Seismology
- Lecture 57 : Numerical Problems in Seismology (Contd.)
Syllabus and materials
At NPTEL, as the course publishes them.
Credits and licence
- Institution
- IIT-ISM Dhanbad
- Department
- Civil Engineering
- Teacher
- Prof. Mohit Agrawal
- Level
- Undergraduate
- Language
- English
- Subjects
- Engineering
- Source
- NPTEL
- Licence
- CC BY-NC-SA, as NPTEL states it. Non-commercial use only. NPTEL's terms
- Attribution
- NPTEL states: "Distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike / CC BY - NC - SA", beside a BY-NC-SA badge. Coordinated by IIT Kharagpur.
- Who can watch
- NPTEL gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed