An experimental investigation of gravity-driven shale tectonics in progradational delta

Many deltas exhibit gravitational deformation of their sedimentary cover. In these systems, the décollement layers do not always consist of rock salt but sometimes of overpressured shale. Unlike salt, the efficiency of detachment in shale depends on the magnitude of fluid overpressures and it varies through time and space, as rapid sedimentary burial progrades into deeper water. As a result, the gravity deformational domains are progressively translated seaward. Sandbox models involving high air pore pressures were used to simulate such gravity-driven shale tectonics in prograding deltas. Models were built with sand of various permeabilities and air was injected to simulate the mechanical effects of fluid overpressure. Our apparatus for the injection of air allowed us to control subsurface pressures in space and time during the experiments, and it was used to simulate the advance of the front of the overpressured domain during the sedimentary progradation. In our models, sand kept obeying a frictional behavior, for medium to high pore pressures, and the detachment appeared as very thin shear bands. Compressional belts that formed during the experiment were dominated by asymmetric basinward-verging fore-thrusts, as is often observed in deep-water, shale-detached foldbelts. Where the value of fluid pressures approached that of the lithostatic stress, sand was fluidized, resulting in ductile strains analogous to what occurs in highly overpressured mobile shale. During progradation, ancient buried thrustbelts were reactivated, thereby controlling later extension. During the experiments, sand volcanoes, analogous to mud volcanoes, formed in relation with tectonic structures. Some of them developed near normal faults but many of them formed directly above old buried thrusts.