journal article·2025-12-19Open access

A Review of Numerical Simulation Tools for Coupling Earth’s Interior and Lithospheric Stress Fields

Danhua Zhang, Cheng Jiang, Xiaowen Lan, Jiayong Tian

Applied Sciences· Volume 16· Issue 1

Abstract

As a bridge connecting processes in the Earth’s interior and the superficial lithosphere, distribution characteristics of global stress fields could benefit the verification of geodynamical models and reflect spatial variations of lithospheric strength. Numerical simulation of the global stress field could provide the temporal evolution process of the stress fields, and reveal the dynamic process of accumulation and release of the in situ stress fields as well as the quantitative relationship between force sources and the stress fields, which could compensate for the sparsity and insufficient representativeness of in situ stress observation data. To advance the investigation on the global stress fields, we review the state-of-the-art progress of numerical simulation tools for global stress fields and their applications, and show the existing problems as well as future trends.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: High-pressure geophysics and materials · earthquake and tectonic studies · Geological and Geochemical Analysis

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management of China, No. 1 Rd. Anningzhuang, Beijing 100085, China

Funding

Major National Science and Technology Project of Deep Earth Program

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