Slip, Reactivation and Termination of Faults

In this chapter we explore in detail the displacement on faults: Section 7.1 surveys the parameters that affect the displacement distribution on a fault, and presents the Walsh—Watterson model of the growth and displacement distribution of ‘blind’ faults.Section 7.2 examines how the near-tip stresses determine the modes of fault propagation and termination.Section 7.3 derives the formula for the maximum resolved shear stress on a fault, and the conditions for fault reactivation and inversion in Andersonian stress regimes with arbitrarily oriented horizontal principal stresses.Section 7.4 deals with the compressive inversion of ‘weak’ normal faults, and the role which ‘hardened’ faults may play during the contractive inversion of a basin.Section 7.5 compares the tectono-mechanical geneses of shear joints and faults.