Cataclasis is the granulation, crushing, or milling of a coherent rock mass to produce a more finely grained material called a cataclastic rock. Cataclastic deformation entails both the fracture and subsequent rigid-body rotation of mineral grains or aggregates. This friction-dependent mechanism of brittle deformation is common in the upper crust where strain rates may be relatively high (> 10− 14) and confining pressures and temperatures relatively low (<5 kb and 200°C). Cataclastic rocks include all earth materials that have been subjected to deformation during which grain size reduction occurred by means of brittle fracture on the scale of individual grains.
Cataclastic rocks may have a primary cohesion or consist of an incoherent aggregate. The latter includes both fault breccia and fault gouge. Both Higgins's (1971) and Sibson's (1977)classifications of cataclastic rocks defines fault breccia as an incoherent rock with more than 30% by volume of fragments visible to the naked...
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Engelder, T. (1987). Cataclastic rocks . In: Structural Geology and Tectonics. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31080-0_9
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