Duration - 1/05/98 - 30/09/99
Funding - EU Training and Mobility Research Fellowship
This Marie Curie Research grant was awarded to Dr Veronique Meyer, formerly a PhD student at the University of Rennes (France), to conduct research at Liverpool in collaboration with our group.
Summary - The geometrical characteristics of fault sare related to the kinematics and bulk strain accommodated by the faultnetwork. Experimental studies, from PhD research at Rennes, show that maximum fault cumulative displacements do not occur on newly formed faults responding to the most recent incremental stress field but on longer-lived faults following geometric relations controlled by the bulk deformation field. Recent work on natural fault systems support the existence of such relations, e.g. correlations between fault displacement rate and both fault size (i.e.maximum displacement or fault length) and regional strain rate. This project will define the geometrical characteristics of faults, including orientation, fault length, displacement and both incremental and cumulative geometric moment, and their relationship to bulk deformation quantities, such as regional strain rate, by combining quantitative fault analysis of experimental models (analogue and numerical) and natural fault systems. The latter will include a significant training component involving the analysis and interpretationof fault systems, from both Europe and elsewhere, which are imaged on 3-D seismic and allow displacement backstripping through time. Fault growth will be established on time scales longer than most historical earthquake datasets, but less than 1Ma, and will have implications for earthquakeprediction, and potential benefits for the petroleum industry.
Contact: Conrad Childs
Tel: +353 1 716 2608
Email