Fault Hanging Wall Footwall

The dip of a fault plane is its angle of inclination measured from the horizontal.

Fault hanging wall footwall.

Hanging wall and footwall the two sides of a non vertical fault are known as the hanging wall and footwall. The fault strike is the direction of the line of intersection between the fault plane and earth s surface. Any fault plane can be completely described with two measurements. Mainly because the names hanging wall and footwall were named by miners who weren t trying to be cute.

Draw a normal and reverse fault label the hanging wall and footwall for each also show how they move for each fault. The block below is called the footwall. Its strike and its dip. Quite often the ore that a miner wants to get to is sitting right on that inclined plane the ore is in the fault.

In fault fault plane is called the hanging wall or headwall. Normal fractures in rock with no offset where there has been no motion are called. The line it makes on the earth s surface is the fault trace. Generally speaking the hanging wall and footwall of a fault are in contact with each other.

It is a flat surface that may be vertical or sloping. When the fault plane is vertical there is no hanging wall or footwall. In some kinds of mineral deposits there is ore directly in the fault so you could say the miners were mining between the hanging wall and footwall. The hanging wall occurs above the fault plane and the footwall occurs below it.

Also miners will mine ore not hanging walls or footwalls. Most faults broken places are essentially inclined planes like this. 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. The dip of a fault plane is its angle of inclination measured from the horizontal.

The hanging wall composed of extended thinned and brittle crustal material can be cut by numerous normal faults. When working a tabular ore body the miner stood with the footwall under his feet and with the hanging wall above him. These either merge into the detachment fault at depth or simply terminate at the detachment fault surface without shallowing. This terminology comes from mining.

A n fault forms when the hanging wall moves down relative to the footwall a.