Geomechanical Modeling in Fold-and-Thrust Belts Systems

Abstract:

We present a large-strain poro-mechanical model to investigate the evolution of stress and strain in fold and thrust belt systems. We impose horizontal shortening in the model and observe that a tapered wedge develops. Inside the accretionary wedge, the horizontal effective stress increases to about 2.3 times the vertical effective stress. The maximum principle stress direction rotates gradually from the initial vertical direction to the horizontal direction as the sediment gets closer to the backstop. We use stress paths to illustrate how the stresses evolve during the thrust loading. We find the sediment stress path starts from uniaxial condition and moves towards critical state condition. We categorize the thrust belt into 3 zones according to their stress conditions from the backstop to the farfield: critical state region, transition region, and uniaxial region. We show that the sediments within the accretionary wedge are at critical state, which indicate they lost their strength to resist deformation. The sediment porosity decreases dramatically within the wedge due to high mean effective and differential stress. We built the model in finite element program Elfen. The sediments are modeled as poro-elastoplastic materials with a critical state soil model. Overall, our results provide insights of stress and porosity evolution in compressional regimes and can assist field stress and pressure predictions.