10 February 2023

Friday fold: Kelvin-Helmholtz waves in granite?

Posted by Callan Bentley

Reader Christian Gronau returns with another “guest Friday fold” submission.

Christian writes,

Greetings from a cold and wet west coast.   A good time to root through old rock samples   –  and let the imagination run free … 

The little compilation below strikes me as visually compelling (both photographs are mine)  –  but how likely is it that the suggested analogy has any merit ?

Would it have some entertainment value to post this triptych under your rubric of “Friday Fold”?   I certainly would like to hear (your) expert opinion on the question raised.

The cut and polished cobble from a local BC beach is 10cm wide and consists of two common local rock types :  typical Cordilleran granodiorite (bottom) and dark grey andesite.  The latter forms extensive dyke complexes, cutting through the granodiorite in a number of styles, with hard linear to soft undulating contacts, including faulted and fragmented sections.  The local dykes range from centimetres to many meters in width.

Certainly the visual match is spot-on! A neat example, and I would not be too surprised if a similar variation in rheology under the traction of simple shear induced these structures. What do other readers think?

Thanks for pitching in with the Friday fold, Christian!