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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal

Earth and Environmental Sciences

EES 612: Structural Geology and Rock Deformation (4)

Introduction: Structure of the course. Introduction to structural geology and tectonics.Interior of the earth and other planetary bodies. The Earth’s crust and plate tectonics. The structure of the continental crust.

Stress, strain and deformation:  Stress:  Basic definitions, different types of stress tensors, Mohr`s diagram: Graphical analysis of stress. Strain:  basic definitions,.Measurement of strain. Rheology of rocks and minerals: concept of brittle and ductile deformation.

Fracture and joints:  Classification of fractures, geometry of fracture system in three dimensions, microscopic features of fractured surfaces.

Faults: Different types of faults, recognition of faults, measurement of fault displacements. Fault Geometry. Orientation of stress field and fault kinematics.

Mechanics of fracturing and faulting: Experimental fracturing of rocks and minerals. The Coulomb Fracture Criterion, effect of confining pressure on fracturing and frictional sliding. The Griffith theory of fracture.

Folding: Geometric descriptions of folds, fold scale and attitude, the element of fold styles, the order of folding, common styles and structures associated with folding.

Kinematics of Folding:  Folding mechanism: a) flexural folding and shear folding of single layers, b) multilayer folding, c) formation of kink and chevron fold, drag fold.

Foliation and lineation in deformed rocks: Different types of foliations: Compositional, disjunctive, crenulation and continuous. Lineation: Structural and mineral, association of lineation and other structures.

Microscopic aspects of ductile deformation: Mechanisms of low temperature deformation, twin gliding, diffusion and solution creep, linear crystal defects. Microscopic criteria for identification of dislocation and diffusion creep.

Shear zone and progressive deformation: The nature of shear zone, mechanism of formation of shear zone, Strain in shear zone, determining the sense of shear in shear zone,  shear zone and active tectonics.

Structural Geology and plate tectonics: Introduction to plate tectonics, different types of tectonic boundaries, development of structures at active plate margins

Measurement techniques and preparations of geological maps in structural geology: Orientation and representations of planer and linear structures, strike and dip of planer structures,  pitch and plunge of linear structure, graphical representation of structures, stereographic projections of geological structures, preparation of geological maps. Graphical analysis of structures.

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