5. Discussion
We examined quantitatively the geometrical and mechanical characteristics of rock mass structures along the YLTP Fault, and infer that fault-induced deformation is the dominant control on rock mass strength within a fault damage zone that was estimated as 5.9 ± 0.6 km (Fig. 8). Quidelleur et al. (1997) studied the internal thermal properties and evolution of YLTP Fault using biotite and K-feldspar ages and numerical simulation in the WL region. We observe a good match between our threshold distance of damage along the YLTP Fault and the location of the boundary in their thermal model (Fig. 8). Previous studies indicated a trend of increasing damage zone width with displacement of fault, and that a lack of data for large faults (with displacements larger than 100 m) limits the possibility to find a statistically valid relationship for larger faults (Savage & Brodsky, 2011, De Joussineau & Aydin, 2007; Faulkner et al., 2010; Laubach et al., 2014; Torabi et al.,2019). By combining the displacement data of Quidelleur et al. (1997) and our damage zone width estimate, we offer value of 5.9 ± 0.6 km close to the maximum reported in the literature (Fig. 9). Within this damage zone, both fracture density and rock mass cohesion exhibit a power law relation with distance from the core of the YLZP Fault.