Deterministic chaos in frictional wedges revealed by convergence analysis

SUMMARYA triangular wedge, composed of a frictional material such as sand, and accreting additional material at its front, is the classical prototype for accretionary wedges and fold‐and‐thrust belts. A simplified method is proposed to capture the internal deformation of this structure resulting fro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal for numerical and analytical methods in geomechanics 2013-12, Vol.37 (17), p.3036-3051
Main Authors: Mary, B.C.L., Maillot, B., Leroy, Y.M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
accretionary wedges
Chaos theory
Convergence
Deformation
deterministic chaos
Discretization
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
Failure
fold-and-thrust belts
frictional materials
imperfection sensitivity
kinematic approach
limit analysis
Sand
Sciences of the Universe
Tectonics. Structural geology. Plate tectonics
Topography
Wedges
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:SUMMARYA triangular wedge, composed of a frictional material such as sand, and accreting additional material at its front, is the classical prototype for accretionary wedges and fold‐and‐thrust belts. A simplified method is proposed to capture the internal deformation of this structure resulting from a large number of faulting events during compression. The method combines the application of the kinematic approach of limit analysis to predict the optimum thrust‐fold and a set of geometrical rules to update the geometry accordingly, at each increment of shortening. It is shown that the structure topography remains approximately planar with a slope predicted by the critical Coulomb wedge theory. Failure by faulting occurs anywhere within the wedge at criticality, and its exact position is sensitive to topographic perturbations resulting from the deformation history. The convergence analysis in terms of the shortening increments and of the topography discretization reveals that the timing and the position of a single faulting event cannot be predicted. The convergence is achieved nevertheless in terms of the statistics of the distribution of the faulting events throughout the structure and during the entire deformation history. It is these two convergence properties that are presented to justify the claim that these compressed frictional wedges are imperfection sensitive, chaotic systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN:0363-9061
1096-9853
DOI:10.1002/nag.2177