A rotating elastic plate/block model for Eurasia

Abstract

On the assumption that a plate is elastically deformable and may rotate as a whole, we found that Eurasian area may be divided into an Eurasian plate and three blocks of the Xiyu, the North China and the Southeast Asia according to tectonic frame of the East and Southeast Asia and the ITRF2008 velocity field in Eurasian area. F tests show that the accuracy of this elastic-plate/block model is significantly higher than the corresponding rigid-plate models; the area covered is notably larger also.

Keywords

• Eurasian plate
• stress-strain equation
• ITRF2008
• velocity field
• plate motion model
• North China area