Fault Hanging Wall Footwall

Mainly because the names hanging wall and footwall were named by miners who weren t trying to be cute.

Fault hanging wall footwall.

American heritage dictionary of the english language fifth edition. The block below is called the footwall. Most faults broken places are essentially inclined planes like this. When rocks slip past each other in faulting the upper or overlying block along the fault plane is called the hanging wall or headwall.

The fault strike is the direction of the line of intersection between the fault plane and earth s surface. The dip of a fault plane is its angle of inclination measured from the horizontal. Quite often the ore that a miner wants to get to is sitting right on that inclined plane the ore is in the fault. A reverse fault is the opposite of a normal fault the hanging wall moves up relative to the footwall.

The underlying block of a fault having an inclined fault plane. The fault plane is where the action is. Reverse faults indicate compressive shortening of the crust. The main components of a fault are 1 the fault plane 2 the fault trace 3 the hanging wall and 4 the footwall.

The terminology of normal and reverse comes from coal mining in england where normal faults are the most common. The names come about from the. The block below is called the footwall. The dip of a reverse fault is relatively steep greater than 45.

The line it makes on the earth s surface is the fault trace. The mass of rock underlying a mineral deposit in a mine. It is a flat surface that may be vertical or sloping. When the fault plane is vertical there is no hanging wall or footwall.

Draw a normal and reverse fault label the hanging wall and footwall for each also show how they move for each fault. Where the fault plane is sloping as with normal and reverse faults the upper side is the hanging wall and the lower side is the footwall.