Most of the earthquake faults in North-East India, China, mid Atlantic-ridge, the Pacific seismic belt and Japan are found to be predominantly dip-slip in nature. In the present paper a dip-slip fault is taken situated in an elastic layer over a viscoelastic half space representing the lithosphere-asthenosphere system. A movement of the dip-slip nature across the fault occurs when the accumulated stress due to various tectonic reasons e.g. mantle convection etc., exceeds the local friction and cohesive forces across the fault. The movement is assumed to be slipping in nature, expressions for displacements, stresses and strains are obtained by solving associated boundary value problem with the help of integral transformation and Green's function method and a suitable numerical methods is used for computation. A detailed study of these expressions may give some ideas about the nature of stress accumulation in the system, which in turn will be helpful in formulating an earthquake prediction programme.

Most of the earthquake faults in NorthEast India, China, mid Atlantic-ridge, the Pacific seismic belt and Japan are found to be predominantly d ip-slip in nature. In the present paper a dip-slip fault is taken to be situated in a viscoelastic half space representing the upper lithospheric region of the Earth. A movement of the dip-slip nature across the fault occurs when the accumulated stress due to various tectonic reasons e.g. mantle convection etc, exceeds the local frict ion and cohesive forces across the fault. The movement is assumed to be creeping in nature, expressions for displacement, stress and strains are obtained by suitable mathematical methods. A detailed study of these expressions may give some ideas about the nature of stress accumulation in the system, which in turn will be helpfu l in formu lating an earthquake pred iction programme.

The process of stress accumulation near earthquake faults during the aseismic period in between two major seismic events in seismically active regions has become a subject of research during the last few decades. In the present paper a long dip -slip fault is taken to be situated in a viscoelastic layer over a viscoelastic half space representing the lithosphere-asthenosphere system. A movement of the dip-slip nature across the fault occurs when the accumulated stress due to various tectonic reasons, e.g., mantle convection etc., exceeds the local friction and cohesive forces across the fault. The movement is assumed to be slipping in nature, expressions for displacements, stresses and strains are obtained by solving the associated boundary value problem with the help of integral transformation and Green's function method. A detailed study of these expressions may give some ideas about the nature of stress accumulation in the system, which in turn will be helpful in formulating an earthquake prediction programme