Abstract
Abstract. Structural restoration is commonly used to assess the deformation of geological structures and to reconstruct past basin geometries. For this, geomechanical restoration considers faults as frictionless contact surfaces. To bring more physical behavior and better handle large deformations, we build on a reverse-time Stokes-based method, previously applied to restore salt structures with negative time step advection. We test the applicability of the method to structures including sediments of variable viscosity, faults and non-flat topography. We present a simulation code that uses a combination of arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian methods and particle-in-cell methods, and is coupled with adaptive mesh refinement. It is used to apply the reverse-time Stokes-based method on simple two-dimensional geological cross-sections and shows that reasonable restored geometries can be obtained.
Highlights
The Earth’s subsurface is the result of millions of years of deformation
These methods allow us to evaluate the consistency of a model and test the hypotheses which lead to its construction, in order to generate paleo-basin geometries consistent with present-day observations for use in more elaborate hydromechanical forward models (e.g., Bouziat et al, 2019)
We have presented a scheme that exploits the reversibility of Stokes equations to perform structural restoration on different geological setups
Summary
The Earth’s subsurface is the result of millions of years of deformation. Determining the deformation history from present-day structures has been a concern for geoscientists who try to understand and quantify basin evolution. Several methods have been developed to take into account the effects of other important parameters, like erosion and deposition of sediments (e.g., Dimakis et al, 1998), isostasy compensation (e.g., Allen and Allen, 2013), thermal subsidence due to mantle thermal effect (Royden and Keen, 1980; Allen and Allen, 2013), rock decompaction due to a change of load (e.g., Athy, 1930; Durand-Riard et al, 2011; Allen and Allen, 2013), or, at a smaller scale, the reverse migration of channelized systems (e.g., Parquer et al, 2017) These methods allow us to evaluate the consistency of a model and test the hypotheses which lead to its construction, in order to generate paleo-basin geometries consistent with present-day observations for use in more elaborate hydromechanical forward models (e.g., Bouziat et al, 2019). We focus on the structural restoration based on unfolding and unfaulting
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