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Faults and Joints3

The document discusses different types of fractures including faults, joints, and mylonites. It describes how to identify faults in the field using various features and patterns. The document also classifies and describes different types of joints that form under various conditions like tension, shear, columns, and stylolites.

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bcet19-tgondwe
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28 views12 pages

Faults and Joints3

The document discusses different types of fractures including faults, joints, and mylonites. It describes how to identify faults in the field using various features and patterns. The document also classifies and describes different types of joints that form under various conditions like tension, shear, columns, and stylolites.

Uploaded by

bcet19-tgondwe
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Structural Geology Part II

Fractures ( Faults and Joints)


Mylonites, which are not really fault rocks although loosely referred to
as such by Sibson, are subdivided based on the amount of large, original
grains and recrystallized matrix. Mylonites are well foliated and
commonly also lineated and show abundant evidence of plastic
deformation mechanisms rather than frictional sliding and grain
crushing.

They form at greater depths and temperatures than cataclasites and


other fault rocks; above 300 C for quartz-rich rocks.
~

The blastomylonite, is a mylonite that has recrystallized after the


deformation .
How to Identify faults in field ?

1. Discontinuity of structures.
2. Presence of slicken structures
3. Presence of Cataclasites
4. Presence of Fault braccias
5. Presence of horses and slice
6. Repetition and omission of strata.
7. Silicification and mineralization
8. Trellis drainage pattern
9. Abrupt change in sedimentological facies.
10. Physiographic features
1. Offset ridge
2. Scrap
1. Fault scrap
2. Fault line
3. Triangular facets
Joints
Joints are defined as fractures of geological origin along which no
appreciable displacement has occurred.

Joints occurs generally in parallel or sub parallel called joint set.

Classification of Joints:

Tension joints:
Tension joints are those, which are formed as a result of tension forces.
These joints are relatively open and have rough and irregular surfaces.

Shear joints:
These are joints associated with deformed rocks especially folded rocks.
These joints occur as intersecting or crisscrossing sets at a high angle.
These joints are referred to as conjugate joint system.
Mural Joints:
These joints are common in granites and related plutonic rocks and some
hypabyssal rocks. These joints appear in a three dimensional network,
the joint sets being mutually perpendicular to each other. The joints break
the rock into separate somewhat cubical blocks.

Sheet Joints:
These joints also are seen in granites and other plutonic rocks. In this
case there is one set of prominent joints parallel to the ground surface
whose spacing generally increase with depth and a second set running at
right angles.

Columnar Joints:
These joints are seen in basalts and some other volcanic igneous rocks.
They consist of vertical and horizontal joints separating the rock body
into a number of vertical polygonal (quite often hexagonal prismatic
columns). When the horizontal lavas cool weak planes are developed by
radial contraction causing these joints.
Stylolitic joints
Stylolitic joints have a characteristic saw-tooth profile and an
interdigitating cone-like form in three dimensions. The interlocking
‘teeth’ are normal or oblique to the joint surface. Stylolitic joints are
form due to deformation mechanism is called pressure solution.
Stylolites are particularly common in limestone.

Exfoliation joints or sheet joints are surface-parallel fracture systems in


rock, and often leading to erosion of concentric slabs.
Plumose structures:
Plumose structures are aggregates of gentle, curvilinear undulations (the
hackle marks) that radiate from the point where the joint originated and
fan outward from a generally straight, more rarely curved axial line, then
resembling the shape and imprint of a feather. The origin commonly is
some rock heterogeneity such as ripples on bedding planes or inclusions
(concretion, nodule, clast, fossil, etc.) in beds. Hackles are often very
fine near the joint origin.

Hackles diverge sharply at angles of about 30° from the central axis,
gradually curving to angles of about 70° near the margins of the joint
surface. The scale of plumose patterns seems to depend on the grain size
of the rock.

Rib-marks form a series of regular, concentric and arcuate changes or


ramps in the orientation of the joint surface, giving cuspate, waveforms
or rounded ridges or furrows.
en echelon
The term 'en echelon' refers to closely-spaced, parallel or subparallel,
overlapping or step-like minor structural features in rock (faults, tension
fractures).

pinnate fractures
Extension fractures that occur along a fault as en échelon arrays pattern
that point in the direction of fault movement.

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