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.