How To Identify Hanging Wall And Footwall

Normal dip slip faults are produced by vertical compression as earth s crust lengthens.

How to identify hanging wall and footwall.

In a strike slip fault they slide past each other the foot wall and hanging wall are not there because it has. Hanging wall movement determines the geometric classification of faulting. Normal faults are common. But that is when the foot wall moves down the hanging wall moves up.

To determine which is which visualize yourself creating a mine in along the fault. The two sides of a non vertical fault are known as the hanging wall and footwall. In an ideal cirque the headwall is semicircular in plan view. We distinguish between dip slip and strike slip hanging wall movements.

Dip slip movement occurs when the hanging wall moved predominantly up or down relative to the footwall. They bound many of the mountain ranges of the world and many of the rift valleys found along spreading margins. Draw a normal and reverse fault label the hanging wall and footwall for each also show how they move for each fault. The fault plane is where the action is.

When working a tabular ore body the miner stood with the footwall under his feet and with the hanging wall above him. This situation however is generally found only in cirques cut into flat plateaus. More common are headwalls angular in map view due to irregularities in height along. Cirques tarns u shaped valleys arêtes and horns.

An arcuate cliff called the headwall. To correctly identify a fault you must first figure out which block is the footwall and which is the hanging wall. The line it makes on the earth s surface is the fault trace. In normal faulting the hanging wall moves downwards in relation to the footwall.

The main components of a fault are 1 the fault plane 2 the fault trace 3 the hanging wall and 4 the footwall. Hanging wall and footwall. Every fault tilted from the vertical has a hanging wall and footwall. If the motion was down the fault is called a normal fault if the movement was up the.

It is a flat surface that may be vertical or sloping. Then you determine the relative motion between the hanging wall and footwall. The hanging wall occurs above the fault plane and the footwall occurs below it. In a fault plane that dips 45 degrees the overlying rock unit is the hanging wall and the underlying rock unit is the footwall.

This terminology comes from mining. Other articles where normal fault is discussed.