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Fracture Structure


  As the most common geological structure on the Earth’s crust, a fracture is any separation that divides a rock into two or more pieces. Fractures are commonly caused by geological stress exceeding the rock strength, causing the rock to lose cohesion.

  The fracture here is a part of Zihu-Fenglin Fracture Tectonic Belt, which developed in Cambrian limestone formation formed about 570 million years ago. The dip direction of the fault plane is 318° and the direction of tilt is 70°, on which striations are obvious.

  Striations refer to a set of parallel lines formed when the two blocks of a fault are carved by rock fragments in a fracture belt on the fault plane surface, which can indicate the direction of relative movement of the two blocks of a fault.




Do I make myself clear?

  “Fracture” refers to the dislocation or cracking stratum . It can be classified into three types.

  Cleavage: slight degree of rupture which does not obviously ruin the continuity of the rock.

  Joint: a type of rupture where stratum has cracked, but no obviously relative displacement occurs to two rock walls.

  Fault: the most important category of rupture where obvious relative displacement occurs to two cracked rock walls.


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