How tightly does calcite e-twin constrain stress?

Abstract

Mechanical twinning along calcite e-planes has been used for paleostress analyses. Since the twinning has a critical resolved shear stress at ∼10 MPa, not only principal stress axes but also differential stress can be determined from the twins. In this article, five-dimensional stress space used in plasticity theory was introduced to describe the yield loci of calcite e-twinning. The constraints to paleostress from twin and untwin data and from calcite grains twinned on 0, 1, 2 and 3 e-planes were quantified by using their information contents, which were defined in the stress space. The orientations of twinned and untwinned e-planes are known to constrain not only stress axes but also differential stress, D, but they loose the resolution of D if the twin lamellae were formed at D greater than 50–100 MPa. On the other hand, it is difficult to observe twin lamellae subparallel to a thin section. The stochastic modeling of this effect showed that 20–25% of twin lamellae can be overlooked. The degradation of the constraints by this sampling bias can be serious especially for the determination of D.