Collateral damage: Evolution with displacement of fracture distribution and secondary fault strands in fault damage zones

Abstract

resulting in an apparently more gradual decay with distance, and (3) a change in apparent decay and fault zone thickness becomes evident in faults that have displaced more than ∼150 m. This last observation is consistent with a stochastic model where strand formation is related to the number of fractures within the damage zone, which in turn is a function of displacement. These three observations together suggest that the apparent break in scaling between small and large faults is due to the nucleation of secondary faults and not a change in process.