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Subduction of an oceanic plate under the Pacific margin of South America has heen prevalent since Jurassic times. Magmatic and deformation centres have migrated eastward since suhduction began. Northern Chile houses two north-south trench linked strike-slip fault systems, the Atacama Fault Zone and the Domeyko Fault System (DFS). The DFS lies within the Chilean Precordillera from 2 10 to 28°S. Lateral movement began on the DFS in the Eocene. The DFS can be divided into three segments which have apparently undergone differing deformation histories. This study has focused on the central segment of the DFS, to determine fault kinematics and to establish a relative chronology of deformation. Observations have been made in more detail than previous investigations and have heen used to infer the deformation history . Shallow level faulting has resulted in heavily fractured zones with occasional slickenline surfaces. It is difficult to infer kinematics of faulting from these. Much effort has been expended in developing techniques to analyse fracture patterns associated with brittle faulting under conditions of plane strain, simple shear. A novel approach of analysing the shapes of clasts of rock defined by secondary fractures within a fault zone has been used. The clasts approximate ellipses when viewed in 2 dimensions. Combining ellipse orientation and aspect ratio from mutually perpendicular sections through the fault zone allowed calculation of an ellipsoid representative of the clasts of rock in 3 dimensions. Independent determination of the fault kinematics using stratigraphic relationships across the fault, fracture distribution, incremental strain axes and palaeomagnetic analysis has all owed evaluation of the new technique. The shapes of rock clasts are found to be related to the kinematics of the fault system. Up to a critical stage of development of the fault zone the axes of the rock clasts parallel the slip direction, intermediate strain axis and pole to the boundary faults. Which rock clast axis parallels which structural feature depends upon the spacing and curvature of fractures and stage of development of the fault zone. Analysis of the shapcs or rock clasts defined by fractures can avoid bias of the data set towards thicker fractures or against irregular fractures, which can occur when measuring fracture orientations directly. The degree of development of the fault zone varies laterally along the fault over short distances. This causes the shape.: fabric of the rock clasts to change, so predictions of connectivity within a fault zone are limited. The history of the central segment of the DFS determined from this study is found to occur with earlier workers. The complementary deformation histories produced from two scales of ohservation verifies the reliability of the chronology. Lateral movements along the DFS are thought to begin in the Eocene with a sinistral transpressive event which occurred along all three segments of the DFS. En echelon folds, east and west verging thrusts and clockwise rotations associated with sinistral faulting along the master fault of the segment are documented. Later, in the Oligocene, dextral faulting occurred. large clockwise palaeomagnetic rotations, determined from Palaeozoic samples beside the master fault, indicate sinistral displacements have been larger than dextral disp acements. It is inferred that only one episode of large lateral transport occurred. This is the Eocene sinistral event. Normal faulting associated with sinistral displ acements along the western side of the system are documented. This later sinistral faulting has not been documented before in the central segment of the DFS. After Oligocene age dextral faulting, the three segments of the DFS underwent separate deformation histories, as the main Andean deformation foci had moved eastward.

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Master of Science / Civil Engineering / Dunja Peric / The conventional triaxial test is the primary laboratory test for determining the shear strength of soils. Geotechnical field conditions such as long earth dams, long embankments, long retaining walls, strip foundations, tunnels, and buried pipelines often experience plane strain states of stress. However, stress strain and load deformation responses in plane strain loading differ considerably from responses observed in the conventional triaxial test. Research has shown that soils loaded in a plane strain state are far more sensitive to imperfections than soils tested in a conventional triaxial device. Plane strain loading leads to material instability manifested as sudden localized failure, resulting in decreased load-carrying capacity of the soil and compromised geotechnical and civil infrastructures. Although previous studies have mostly focused on granular materials, this research investigated the plane strain response of clay. An undrained plane strain compression test program was devised to investigate the effects of past stress history and strain rates on strain localization in kaolin clay. Experiments were carried out in a plane strain (or biaxial) device at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Because the device was heavily internally instrumented, strain localization progress was closely monitored throughout each biaxial test. Clay response in the biaxial test demonstrated three phases: (1) a homogenous response, (2) the onset and propagation of strain localization, and (3) the evolution of strain localization as a shear band. The duration of each phase was determined for each test, and a Lagrange strain tensor was used to obtain the evolution of volumetric and shear strains at the level of a shear band for three tests. Results revealed the development of large strains in these mesoscale structures. Furthermore, evolution of Mohr-Coulomb effective shear strength parameters was traced throughout the propagation and evolution phases by using two different methods. It showed that in clay samples, unlike in granular materials, the post-peak plateau, which is reached by deviatoric stress, corresponds to friction values that are significantly lower than the critical state values. Other researchers who used scanning electron microscope and anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility detected a significant reorientation of clay particles inside shear bands. Their findings combined with findings in this study lead to the conclusion that the sub-meso scale mechanism responsible for large shear strains and a severe reduction in effective friction is a significant reorientation of clay particles inside shear band.

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In our research, aluminum (1050) was deformed by plane strain compression (PSC) up to 65% reduction. The total deformation conditions include four temperatures (from 150oC to 300oC) and two strain rates (5¡Ñ10-2s-1 and 5¡Ñ10-4s-1). After the deformation, the specimens were examined by TEM for observing the morphology of the microstructures and measuring various parameters, which includes the sizes and aspect ratios of dislocation cells, as well as the distribution of misorientation angles for dislocation walls. At last, the proportions of GNBs and IDBs were tried to be determined.

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In the present study, the buckling behavior of beams is analyzed by a plane strain finite element. The displacement-type finite element formulation is based on elasticity and has no any other simplification and assumption except that the beam is of moderate depth. Also all the displacement boundary conditions can be imposed exactly. These are the advantages that beam theories of conventional approach, which simulate beams with neutral plane behaviors, do not have. Therefore the present analyses should be able to obtain buckling load and buckling mode more accurately than conventional method. Numerical values of buckling loads of the present approach will be compared with previously published results of the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and the Timoshenko beam theory, and further with the high order beam theory to reveal their differences. The effects of the geometry ratio, the distribution of axial loads and the displacement boundary conditions on buckling of beams are also discussed.

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