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Effects of Subsidiary Faults on the Geometric Construction of Listric Normal Fault Systems

¹ Tectonic Special Research Centre, School of Applied Geology, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia, 6845; tsong{at}lithos.curtin.edu.au
² Tectonic Special Research Centre, School of Applied Geology, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia, 6845; p.cawood{at}info.curtin.edu.au

Tingguang Song completed his M.S. degree in petroleum geology at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) in 1986., He then worked as a lecturer at that university and was involved in research on extension and compression basins in eastern and western China. His main interests include seismic interpretation, basin analysis, faulting and its control on petroleum accumulation, and basin inversion. Currently he is completing a Ph.D. on the geometry and kinematics of the Perth Basin, Western Australia.Peter A. Cawood heads the Curtin University node of the Tectonics Special Research Centre. His research is concerned with the integration of field and laboratory studies of orogenic belts and associated sedimentary basins with the development of tectonic models. He has worked in a variety of Archean to Mesozoic orogenic systems in Australia, New Zealand, China, eastern North America, and the Middle East and in their modern analogs from the southwest Pacific.

Listric normal fault systems are one of the most important sites for petroleum exploration in extension basins. The geometry of these systems at depth is commonly uncertain because of poor seismic data. Thus several techniques have been developed to construct the shape and position of the master fault at depth using one or more shallower horizons. Antithetic and synthetic faults commonly disrupt the continuity of bedding in the deformed hanging wall and contribute to the overall extension. Current models either neglect or do not adequately account for the effect of these faults in estimating the geometry of the master fault. We suggest that the extension of individual subsidiary faults should be added to the amount of extension on the master fault during the bed-fault construction. The extension on subsidiary faults is supposed to be transferred into the main fault, along the inclination of shear, although the linking mechanism between the small and main faults is unclear. The inclined shear angle can be estimated by orientation of the antithetic faults. Occurrence of synthetic faults may slightly distort the particle motion trajectories (inclined shear) relative to a hanging-wall reference frame but does not change the overall relative motion pattern. Application of our modification of the inclined shear model to unpublished and published seismic data, as well as an analog experiment model, agrees well with observed fault geometry. Negating the amount of heave on subsidiary faults results in an overestimation of depth to detachment.

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