Quantifying the Relationship between Strike-slip Fault Spacing and Brittle Crust Thickness in Continental Settings based on Sandbox Experiments

Abstract:

Parallel and evenly spaced strike-slip faults occur widely in continental settings. The fault spacing varies from 10s of km along transform fault systems (e.g., southern California and New Zealand) to 200-400 km in continental interiors (e.g., central Tibet, central Asia, and North China plains). In order to understand the role of the brittle crust rheology and thickness in controlling the fault spacing in continental settings, we performed a series of sandbox experiments using medium-grained dry sand under strike-slip simple-shear conditions. With a self-built sliding device, we determined the yield strength of the dry sand to follow a Coulomb fracture relationship: Tn = 0.5173Sn + 15.475(Pa), with R² = 0.936, where Tn is the shear stress, Sn is the normal stress, R is the coefficient of linear correlation, and 15.475 Pa is the cohesive strength. In our experiments, we created parallel Riedel shears in a simple shear zone with sand layer thickness varying from 1 cm to 6 cm. The relationship between the fault spacing (S) and the sand layer thickness (T) fits a linear equation of S = 0.5528T + 4.765, with R² = 0.975. Assuming that the cohesive strength of the continental crust is 1-5 MPa and neglecting the density difference between rock and sand, the scaling relationship between sand and crustal thickness can be approximated as 1:1 X 10⁵ to 1:5 X 10⁵, which means that our experiments simulate a range of crustal thicknesses from 1 km to 30 km. The relevance of the S-T relationship obtained from this study will be tested in areas of active strike-slip tectonics, where the thickness of the brittle crust can be determined by the thickness of the seismogenic zones.