Stress relaxation in a semi-infinite viscoelastic Earth model

Expressions for quasi-static surface stresses resulting from a finite, rectangular, vertical, strike-slip fault in a Maxwellian viscoelastic half-space are derived. Variation of the stresses with time and epicentral distance is studied. Contour maps are obtained in some representative cases. It is found that all nonvanishing stress components at the free surface die exponentially with time. This is in contrast to the behavior of the displacements and strains which, in general, do not vanish for large times.