Conjugate-shear folding: A model for the relationships between foliations, folds and shear zones

Microstructural mapping of whole thin sections cut from two samples of micaschist containing cm-scale folds plus garnet porphyroblasts has provided new insight in the relationships between folding, shearing and foliation development. The garnets exhibit coherent inclusion-trail patterns that place important constraints on the kinematic development of both samples, which are shown to be representative of coaxial versus non-coaxial deformation in rocks containing a pre-existing schistosity. A comparison of crenulations-cleavages geometries in both samples and a review of the geometry of natural and experimental multilayer folds leads to the conclusion that folding involves conjugate shearing at different scales. At microscopic scales, crenulation cleavages nucleate as conjugate-kink or shear instabilities and develop further as a function of the macroscopic partitioning of deformation. In fold-hinge domains, bulk-coaxial deformation results in equal development of conjugate crenulations that progressively coalescence into symmetrical crenulation patterns so that, macroscopically, parallelism is achieved between foliation, fold–axial planes and long axes of strain ellipses. Fold-limb domains represent a system of conjugate-shear zones where single sets of crenulation instabilities with synthetic shearing component preferentially develop producing oblique relationships between the aforementioned elements. Cleavage fanning is inferred as a direct consequence of this conjugate-shear origin of folds. The model implies that crenulation cleavages and S-C fabrics in shear zones form by analogous processes, in both cases involving a component of shearing along foliation planes. The development of conjugate sets of foliation planes surrounding porphyroblasts during early, relatively coaxial stages of deformation explains continued “gyrostatic” behaviour during more advanced non-coaxial stages, as indicated by consistently oriented inclusion trails in the studied samples.