Laser, 3D printing reveals how Earth shakes after earthquakes

On a sunny September morning in 1985, a massive earthquake killed more than 9,000 people in Mexico City, even though the epicenter was about 200 miles away.

The worst damage occurred in the city itself – in part because Mexico City is built on an ancient basin surrounded by mountains. The soft bedrock is thought to have amplified the vibration, causing seismic waves to bounce across the Earth.

Scientists are concerned that many of the world’s most populated cities, such as Los Angeles, are built on similar basins, and it has been difficult for researchers to understand how the Earth moves in such earthquakes. But an innovative technology using 3D printing and lasers could help improve our knowledge of what happens as the ground shakes, and how different underground formations and layers reduce or increase damage in earthquakes.

“We know you’ll experience the same earthquake differently if you’re in a basin or on a mountain, but predicting or simulating that is really difficult, in part because it’s difficult to get the level of detail that you need,” said Sunyoung Park, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. Describe the process published in Scientific Reports. “With these 3D models, you get a level of detail that really helps you see patterns that you wouldn’t otherwise see. It’s a really cool technology.”

The basic truth

Beneath our feet, the earth is made up of different layers laid down over eons. These may range from soft clay to brittle shale. Each reacts differently during an earthquake – for example, more flexible layers can absorb some movement, while others amplify it. The depth and intensity of an earthquake as well as the surrounding geography can also play a role, causing the waves to bounce. All these factors combine to make earthquake damage prediction extremely difficult.

Scientists can use computers to try to model what’s going on, but it’s imperfect. “It’s really hard to simulate all of this, not only is it computationally intensive, but we don’t know enough about physics at small scales – that is, down to a mile wide or less,” Park explained. “For example, if there are water-filled aquifers or magma chambers, how do these affect the waves? We don’t know very well.”

Dating back to the 1920s in Japan, scientists have experimented with building actual physical models of the Earth to understand what happens in earthquakes. But it is very labor intensive and limited. “You have to sculpt many individual layers and try to glue them together perfectly, and there are so many different types of rock that it’s hard to get exact repeats,” Park said.

Therefore, Park and her collaborators thought it would be an ideal application for 3D printing.

Using a special metal 3D printer, they can create as many layers as they want, perfectly stacked on top of each other. It starts with a mineral powder, which is heated by a laser to form one layer at a time; By changing the density and speed of the laser scanning, they can make each layer more porous or denser, to simulate different types of rock.

In this way, the scientists created a replica (on a scale of 250,000 to 1) of the rocks under the city of Los Angeles, only eight inches long.

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