Fault and Joint Development: In Brittle and Semi-Brittle Rock details the theoretical concepts about fault and joint development in rock when they behave as brittle or semi-brittle material. The title first covers the concepts and criteria of brittle failure, along with the limits of temperature and pressure below which rocks may behave in a brittle or semi-brittle manner. Next, the selection details the application of the concepts of brittle failure and elastic theory to the problems of faulting and jointing. The book will be of great use to undergraduate students of geology and its related degrees. The text will also serve professionals in geological disciplines as a reference.

Fault and Joint Development in Brittle and Semi-brittle Rock deals with theories of fault and joint development in rock when they behave as brittle or semi-brittle material. The book contains three chapters, the first of which deals with some of the concepts and criteria of brittle failure along with an attempt to define limits of temperature and pressure below which rocks may behave in a brittle or semi-brittle manner. The second and third chapters discuss the application of these concepts of brittle failure and elastic theory to the problems of faulting and jointing, respectively. It is emphasized that since this book deals with theoretical aspects of structural geology it is concerned with generalizations and approximations. It must be left to the reader to decide how closely these theories approximate to any particular field data. This book is primarily intended for senior undergraduates and postgraduates in geology interested in the interpretation of geological structures. It may also be of interest to some mining and civil engineers.

This book provides an introduction into the mechanics of faulting in the brittle crust of the Earth. It developed from my annual two-semester course on tectono mechanics for graduate students of engineering geology and of rock engineering at the Technical University of Graz (Austria). In this course, it is not my task to present a broad exposition and geometrical description of geological structures, but rather to focus on the mechanical processes that produce the structures. Although this was also the aim of my former book "Mechanics of Tectonic Faulting - Models and Basic Concepts" (1988, Elsevier), henceforth referred to as MTF, the present book is different in organisation and content, in order to meet the requirements of the courses and to include more recent developments. Instead of following the traditional subdivision into extensional, compressional and strike-slip faulting, the presentation focuses on mechanical aspects of tectonic faulting that are common to various, or even all types of tectonic faults in the brittle regime. In this way, geometrically disparate or dissimilar fault structures may be revealed as closely related by the underlying mechanical process, and complex structures may be better understood. It may be useful to indicate how the chapters in the book are organised. The first three chapters are an introduction to rock mechanics, tailored to applications in geology. It also presents the extremely useful graphical method of Mohr's stress circle, which is freely used throughout the book to keep the mathematics to an absolute minimum.

This volume is a state of the art look at our understanding of joint development in the crust. Answers are provided for such questions as the mechanisms by which joints are initiated, the factors controlling the path they follow during the propagation process, and the processes responsible for the arrest of joints. Many of the answers to these questions can be inferred from the geometry of joint surface morphology and joint patterns. Joints are a record of the orientation of stress at the time of propagation and as such they are also useful records of ancient stress fields, regional and local. Because outcrop and subsurface views of joints are limited, statistical techniques are required to characterize joints and joint sets. Finally, joints are subject to post-propagation stresses that further localize deformation and are the focus for the development of new structures.