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Petrofabrics: Petrofabric Analysis

Petrofabrics is the study of the spatial arrangement and relationships of structural and textural elements within rocks on a microscale, including the study of movements that formed these elements. Fabric refers to the arrangement of components that form the external structure of a rock. Petrofabric analysis involves the systematic statistical study of the orientations and distributions of fabric elements in rocks to describe the structural makeup and elucidate the kinematic history.

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2K views1 page

Petrofabrics: Petrofabric Analysis

Petrofabrics is the study of the spatial arrangement and relationships of structural and textural elements within rocks on a microscale, including the study of movements that formed these elements. Fabric refers to the arrangement of components that form the external structure of a rock. Petrofabric analysis involves the systematic statistical study of the orientations and distributions of fabric elements in rocks to describe the structural makeup and elucidate the kinematic history.

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Petrofabrics

The study of spatial relations, esp. on a microscale, of the structural-textural units that comprise a
rock, including a study of the movements that produced these elements. The units may be rock
fragments, mineral grains, or cleavages.

Fabric means the arrangement of the elements that make up an external form.

If the external form is a fold chain, the elements are the linear and planar structures that make up
the folds; if the external form is a conglomerate or tectonic breccia the elements are the pebbles
or the fragments that make up the rock; if the external form is a calcite grain in a marble the
elements that make it up are the ions in the space lattice.

this is a study of the structure rather than of the composition of rocks.

Petrofabric analysis

The systematic study of the fabrics of rocks, generally involving statistical study of the
orientations and distribution of large numbers of fabric elements.

The term fabric denotes collectively all the structural or spatial characteristics of a rock mass.

The fabric elements are classified into two groups:

(1) megascopic features, including bedding, schistosity, foliation, cleavage, faults, joints, folds,
and mineral lineations; and

(2) microscopic features, including the shapes, orientations, and mutual arrangement of the
constituent mineral crystals (texture) and of internal structures (twin lamellae, deformation
bands, and so on) inside the crystals.

The aim of fabric analysis is to obtain as complete and accurate a description as possible
of the structural makeup of the rock mass with a view to elucidating its kinematic history.

The fabric of a sedimentary rock, for example, may retain evidence of the mode of
transport, deposition, and compaction of the sediment in the size, shape, and disposition of the
particles;

similarly, that of an igneous rock may reflect the nature of the flow or of gravitational
segregation of crystals and melt during crystallization.

The fabrics of deformed metamorphic rocks (tectonites) have been most extensively
studied by petrofabric techniques with the objective of determining the details of the history of
deformation and recrystallization.

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