Origin and tectonic interpretation of multiple fault patterns

Abstract

It is shown that in two-dimensional and three-dimensional deformation accommodated by fracture, the symmetry of the fault patterns is an intrinsic attribute because it reflects the symmetry of either stress or strain tensors. The deformation accommodated by sliding along pre-existing planes, when there is kinematic interaction between that planes, forms multiple fault pattern and multiple slickenline sets during a single deformation event. These fault patterns have no restrictions with respect to symmetry, number of fault sets or fault orientation. The kinematic analysis developed here shows that an interacting system is formed by two cross cutting faults and three slickenlines. One slickenline must be parallel to the intersection line between the planes. Also, it is demonstrated that the slickenlines generally do not correspond to the shear stress solution on the planes. Thus, the interaction between planes does not satisfy the assumption of parallelism between shear stress and slip vector. We conclude that the inversion methods to calculate paleostress tensors can lead to erroneous interpretations in structurally complex zones with many pre-existing planes of weakness. We propose four possibilities to form multiple fault patterns: (1) two or more events of faulting obeying Coulomb's law with a change of orientation of the principal stresses in each event; (2) reactivation of non-interacting planes according to the Bott (1959) model; (3) one three-dimensional strain event that obeys the “Slip Model”; this mechanism will form an orthorhombic four-fault pattern and two slickenline sets in a single strain event; and (4) one or more events obeying the interacting block model proposed here, with or without rotation of the principal stresses. We propose the last origin as the most common in continental regions.