3-D slip analyses of listric faults with ideal geometries

Abstract Studying the kinematics of listric faults is of great importance in petroleum geology and seismicity. The deformation related to listric faults differ from the planar fault plane case. This study involves 3-D co-ordinate geometry with spherical co-ordinates to deduce the effective-slip ( e s ) and the net-slip ( n s ) of listric faults of three ideal geometries: spherical, paraboloid and ellipsoidal. We perform 3D slip analyses on two types of listric faults (Type-1 and 2). Previous authors have considered these shapes of fault planes in their modeling. Using the e s , one can track material points before and after faulting, similar to Mukherjee (2019) applied on translational faults with planar fault planes. The n s can be divided into a strike-slip ( s n s ) and a dip-slip component ( d n s ). This resolution being done on the listric fault plane itself, n s ≠ ( s n s 2 + d n s 2 ) 0.5 . This is unlike the planar fault plane case. The purpose of 3D-geometric analysis of listric faults could be, in long run, the restoration of the history of propagation of such faults.