MECHANICAL BASIS FOR CERTAIN FAMILIAR GEOLOGIC STRUCTURES

A simple experiment with loose sand shows that this material exhibits faulting under deformational stresses in a manner remarkably similar to rocks. Moreover, the sand experiment is amenable to theoretical analysis with good agreement between predicted and observed behavior. The same theoretical treatment, with slight modification, is also applicable to the behavior of rocks, and appears to afford a basis of understanding for a variety of empirically well-known geologic structures.