GEOLOGY II
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2021/2022
- Teacher
- RICCARDO CAPUTO
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Primo Semestre
- SSD
- GEO/03
Training objectives
- Capacity to detect, recognise and classify the principal deformation structures of tectonic origin affecting the earth's crust.
Understanding the basic geological processes that produce such structures.
At the end of the course, the student should will have the ability to understand the tectonic structures in four dimensions (the three spatial ones and the time) and this will allow him/her to better face future professional and scientific works, for example of geological mapping and applied geology (in particular Geotechnics). Prerequisites
- It is crucial that the student has already a basic knowledge of Mathematical concepts, like trigonometry and matrixes, and Physics (vectors, kinematics, dynamics and gravity). It is also useful that the student has well understood the arguments of the courses Geology I and Geological Mapping that provided information and examples on the occurrence of various lithologies and the possible complex geometrical relationships among rock bodies.
Course programme
- 1. Principles of Rock Mechanics: stress (the tensor, Mohr representation, fluid pressure and effective stress, genetic partition of the stress tensor); strain (pure shear and simple shear, Mohr representation); rheology of the materials (viscous, plastic and elastic behaviour); brittle behaviour (fracturing criteria, Coulomb and Griffith, Mohr's envelope).
- 22 hours lectures
2. Quasi continuum deformation ('ductile' structures): folds (geometric parametres and related terms); geometric classification of folds; folding processes (passive folding, bending and buckling); folds' mechanical classifications; theories on single-layer and multilayer buckling; folding of anisotropic materialias, chevron and kink folds; folds in 3D ( geometric characteristics, space distribution and relationships); interference structures, geometric classifications; nucleation and develpment of folds.
- 12 hours lectures
3. Pervasive structures: foliatione, cleavage and schystosity; principal characteristics; linear and planar tectonites, geometric and material ones; processes producing cleavage and other types of cleavage.
- 4 hours lectures
4. Discontinuous deformation (brittle structures): definitions; extensional joint and hybrid fractures; principal parametres of faults (geometrici, kinematic, dinamic and temporal); riteria to infer the fault kinematics; the use of tectoglyphs and other criteria; dislocation and its components; fault chronology (relative and absolute); sinsedimentary faults; variability in space and time of the stress tensor.
- 10 hours lectures
5. Tectonic regimes: extensional; contractional; transcurrent; their tensorial and geometric characteristics, structural pattern, associate structures and regional examples.
- 12 hours lectures Didactic methods
- The course is mainly based on frontal teaching by presenting and explaining all the topics included in the programme (see Contents). In order to complement the various concepts and the theoretical models introduced during the lessons, geological examples and the diverse possible practical applications will be sytematically proposed.
During the frontal lessons students are regularly involved in order to verify the degree of understanding of each presented topic. Moreover, at the beginning of the following lesson and before introducing the next argument, students are solicited to ask for explanations and clarifications on the previous topics in order to stimulate them to systematically review their notes thus remaining up to date with the lessons. Learning assessment procedures
- The student will give an oral examination by basically answering to questions on at least three out of the five principal arguments presented during the course (see Contents).
The main purpose of the examination is to verify the student's comprehension of the principal deformational processes occurring in crustal conditions and his/her ability to properly describe them, starting from the necessary basic knowledge on structural, tectonic and rock mechanics issues.
The final score will be based on the critical evaluation of the technical language property, of the completeness and correctness of the concepts exposed by the student and his/her capacity to link the various arguments. Reference texts
- - Guzzetta G. (1991): Introduzione alla Geologia Strutturale. Liguori Editore.
- Price N.J. e Cosgrove J.W. (1990): Analysis of Geological Structures. Cambridge University Press.
- Fossen H. (2010): Structural Geology. Cambridge Univ. Press
