Lecture 7: Faults

Definition: Fault
1) Is any surface or narrow zone with visible shear displacement along the zone
2) Is a fracture along which there is visible offset by shear displacement parallel to the
fracture surface
3) A discontinuity in the velocity or displacement field associated with deformation
4) is a discontinuity with wall parallel displacement dominated by brittle deformation
mechanisms — therefore more likely to occur crustal zones — although hard to tell as
depends on what minerals the rocks are made up of

Fault anatomy:
- Footwall block and hanging wall block
- If drop the hanging wall down will cause a scarp
- Hanging wall block on top, footwall block is underneath

Normal fault:
- Found in extensional tectonic setting
- Where hanging wall drops down relative to footwall
- sigma 1 is gravity

Reverse fault:
- hanging wall is pushed up
- has a steep dip to it — 45-60 degrees
- sigma 1 is horizontal - pushing

Thrust fault:
- hanging fault is pushed up too
- although the dip is less steep
- is a type of reverse fault

Strike slip fault:

- dip of the fault is normally vertical
- either sinistral (left lateral) or dextral (right lateral)
- see what direction the plate is moving if you're looking from one block

- However the real world is not as simple

- Can be combined with strike slip fault and reverse

Displacement (slip) vector = the vector connecting 2 points that have been displaced by the fault
(used to be at the same location but not now — black dots on diagram)

Pitch (rake) = acute angle between the strike of the slip surface and the displacement vector —
angle between 2 of them gives you the degree of obliquity of the fault

Strike separation = the horizontal separation of layers observed parallel to the strike — basically if
drop down 90 degrees find a point then find the distance between if it was straight down and what
the actual point is

Horizontal separation = the separation of layers observed in map view

Dip separation = The separation of layers observed in a vertical section perpendicular to the
strike, if dropped straight down — can be explained by the heave and the throw

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Heave = The horizontal component of the dip separation.

Throw = The vertical component of the dip separation.

- Only a section lying parallel to the displacement vector will give the true displacement on the
fault
- To get the true displacement need a section that is parallel to the displacement
- Normally cause a bell shape
- After an earthquake occurs the fault will slip
- Maximum displacement will be at the centre of the fault and will tapper off at the edges = forming
bell shape
- Big bell curve is an accumulation of a lot of fracture events
- In reality faults are normally like a zone not like a line on a map
- Whether a fault should be considered a surface or a zone depends on the scale of observation,
objectives of the classification, and need for precision
- This thickness is usually much smaller than the offset and several orders of magnitude less than
the fault length.

3 Key structural elements of a fault:

1) Fault core: The primary slip surface
- There is a similar relationship between fault core thickness and displacement.
2) Brittle damage zone: Brittlely deformed wall rock (e.g. breccia) — zone of damage
- Deformation bands are features that form in highly porous rocks and sediments.
- They are mm-thick zones of localised dilation, shear, or compaction
- Zone where lots of deformation bands occur is the brittle damage zone
- There is a positive correlation between fault displacement (D) and damage zone thickness (DT).

3) Ductile drag zone: Ductilely deformed wall rock (e.g. drag folds) — doesn't always exist
normally found in sedimentary rocks

How to faults grow:

- These deformation bands in porous rocks can get faults started
- Deformation bands form in the rock initially, they start to link up, a deformation band zone forms
(damage zone), then finally slip surfaces nucleate in small patches — they propagate link up
and a fault occurs
- Porous rocks are pretty easy to create faults

Low porosity rocks:

- Igneous rocks for example have low porosity and have no pore space
- Shear fractures in a low-porosity rock are unable to propagate along their own plan — too hard
- Instead, new fractures form parallel to σ1, where there is tension.
- Form features such as wing cracks or edge cracks
- These wing cracks are broken by new shear fractures and the process keeps repeating as the
main fracture grows
- Zone of minor fractures = damage zone
- A lot more force needed to create faults in non porous rocks
- Damage features will link up and form a fault
- Structures in the fault damage zone will form prior to, during, and after formation of the slip
surface (fault).
- The process zone = form ahead of the fault tip, fault has maximum displacement in the middle,
and tapper to tips and propagate laterally

Ductile drag zone:

- Drag is folding of layers around a fault related to the formation and/or growth of the fault. They
are typically metres to 10s of m wide, but can be 100s of m wide.

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- They are seen in layers soft enough to deform ductilely in the brittle crust (typically sediments)
- Drag folds are most commonly associated with dip- slip faults since horizontal sedimentary
layers are at a high angle to the slip surface
- There are two geometrically different types of drag:
- Normal drag on a normal fault: layers flex forward parallelism with the fault, bent into the fault
zone
- Reverse drag on a normal fault: only historic normal faults (have a curved surface), rollover
structures
- Reverse drag on a reverse fault - much less common

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