Analysis of Tunnel Stability: Comparison Between Continuous and Discontinuous Approaches

Abstract

The Neogene Alasehir supradetachment basin in western Turkey occurs in the footwall of the modern Alaşehir–Gediz graben and is a major component of the Aegean extensional province in Anatolia that developed during the late Cenozoic exhumation of the Menderes core complex. The size, geometry, accommodation space and internal structure–stratigraphy of this basin were strongly controlled by the kinematics and interplay of four different fault generations throughout its early Miocene-Pleistocene evolution. The ~ E − W-striking, NNE-dipping (10°–30°) Alaşehir detachment fault separates the high-grade crystalline rocks of the core complex below from the Neogene deposits of the basin in the hanging wall above. The basin-parallel, synthetic and antithetic high-angle normal faults represent a block-faulting stage of the continued horizontal extension that terminated the northerly slip along the detachment surface and produced horst-graben structures in and across the basin. These faults were also responsible for the back-tilting of the basinal strata into steeper dips and the rotation of the previously formed faults into gently dipping planes. The mutually crosscutting relationships between the intra-basinal low-angle and basement-involved high-angle and normal faults indicate their contemporaneous development and operation. The NNE-striking, basin-perpendicular oblique–slip hinge faults are reminiscent of transfer (cross) faults in both continental and oceanic extension, and divide the supradetachment basin into a series of fault blocks with their own internal structure and stratigraphy. Differential uplift and exhumation of the core complex rocks along these hinge faults and the varied displacement and slip along and across them within the basinal strata caused differential extension and block-uplift, leading to the formation of local unconformities in the supradetachment basin. Significant changes in the dip directions and strike orientations of the sedimentary beds and the observed deviations from the inferred direction of maximum extension in the adjacent fault blocks resulted from rotational deformation due to hinge faulting. Fault segmentation of the Alaşehir basin as a result of extension-parallel hinge-faulting is a characteristic feature of its supradetachment basin evolution.