Fold formation Flashcards
What are the three basic types of folding?
Buckling, bending, passive folding
What is buckling?
Folding that occurs when layers are loaded parallel to layering
What is bending?
Folding that occurs when layers are loaded at a high angle to the layering
What is passive folding?
Folding of marker bands that cross or are contained within a deforming unit
What does buckling require?
The folded layer to be more competent (more viscous) than the interlayers (matrix) and small irregularities (mechanical instabilities) on the layer interfaces to be nucleation sites for the folds
What is the effect of folding away from the folded layer?
The effect of folding disappears rapidly (about 1 wavelength away)
What do large viscosity contrasts lead to?
More rapid fold amplification and less layer thickening
What controls the fold wavelenth of pitch-and-swell during buckling?
The spacing between the thin sections
What happens when competent layers are close together during multilayer buckling?
They act as a thick single layer
What is harmonic folding?
When the competent layers are spaces out during multilayer buckling
What is polyharmonic folding?
Where folds with more than one wavelength form (the whole package confroms to the geometry of a controlling layer) because the layers vary in thickness and/or viscosity contrast with the matrix
What is disharmonic folding?
Layers fold independently because they are further apart than each other’s zone of influence
What is ptygmatic folding?
Where incompetent layers control the large scale deformation because they are much thicker, the fold wavelength/layer thickness relationships are regular but the axial surfaces vary greatly in orientation
Why is resistance to buckling of the whole multilayer controlled by the thickest layers?
Resistance to buckling is proportional to layer thickness cubed
When do folds need accommodation structures?
When layers start to fold early they end up with limbs that are too long or short for the ultimate fold shape, these are forced to adujst when the controlling layer starts to buckle
What are four examples of accommodation structures?
Knee-like hinge (hinge collapse), reverse faulting in the hinge, hinge thrust over, boudinaged limb
What are the two ways to model the buckling behavior of multilayers?
1; treating the individual layers as separate entities and predicting how the layers will interact when compressed, 2; treating the multilayer as a statistically homogenous but mechanically anisotropic material
What is anisotropy?
When a rock has a resistance to shearing that is different to its resistance to compression
What are two examples of materials that are classically anisotropic?
Thinly-bedded multilayers and rocks with a strongly developed penetrative fabric, such as cleavage
What does modelling aim to find?
The condition for the appearence of an instability that interrupts uniform shortning and leads to the multilayer becoming non-planar
What two features can be described by analysing buckling using anisotropy but not other methods?
Folds with very straight limbs and folds with axial planes that are oblique to the layers (even when the principal compression is along the layering)
What is a kink band?
Folds with kink-like geometries, the angularity of their hinges inhibit the use of dip isogon methods
What is used to describe kink bands?
Angles and dimensions
What does the final geometry of structures in anisotropic modelling depend on?
Degree of anisotropy and the angle at which the multilayer is compressed
How can boudinage and extensional kink bands be formed?
Layer-normal compression and active layer-parallel extension
What structure is formed very late in orogeny and what can they tell us?
Kink bands, they lack information about the orogenesis (more information as they get bigger)
What are the four stages of the development of buckles during layer parallel compression?
Pre-buckle shortning, fold initiation, fold amplification, post-buckle flattening
What stages does active buckling occur in?
Fold initiation and fold amplification, the fold continues to grow passively in stage 4