Solid Earth, 6, 497–514, 2015 www.solid-earth.net/6/497/2015/ doi:10.5194/se-6-497-2015 © Author(s) 2015. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Fracturing of ductile anisotropic multilayers: influence of material strength E. Gomez-Rivas1, A. Griera2, and M.-G. Llorens3 1Department of Geology and Petroleum Geology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK 2Departament de Geologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain 3Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany Correspondence to: E. Gomez-Rivas (
[email protected]) Received: 31 December 2014 – Published in Solid Earth Discuss.: 29 January 2015 Revised: 10 April 2015 – Accepted: 20 April 2015 – Published: 19 May 2015 Abstract. Fractures in rocks deformed under dominant duc- 1 Introduction tile conditions typically form simultaneously with viscous flow. Material strength plays a fundamental role during frac- ture development in such systems, since fracture propaga- The deformation behaviour of Earth’s crust rocks is often tion can be strongly reduced if the material accommodates seen as a transition from frictional and elastic–brittle be- most of the deformation by viscous flow. Additionally, the haviour at shallow depths to ductile crystal–plastic flow at degree and nature of anisotropy can influence the orienta- deeper levels. The change from brittle and discontinuous de- tion and type of resulting fractures. In this study, four plas- formation (i.e. fracture-dominated) to ductile and continuous ticine multilayer models have been deformed under coaxial deformation (i.e. flow-dominated) is known as the brittle- boundary conditions to investigate the influence of strength to-ductile transition and is typically characterised by sys- and anisotropy on the formation of fracture networks.