This research is an investigation into two different aspects of the faulting process. The first part of the study focuses on the initial stages of fault formation, while the second analyzes the deformation produced by an existing fault. The section on fault formation is an attempt to determine whether slip on an existing fault has a significant effect on the formation of subsequent faults. A two-dimensional elastic finite element technique is used to examine the system of stresses produced by slip on an initial fault, assuming that deformation occurs either elastically or by brittle failure. A Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion is used to determine the most likely region of secondary fault initiation. A strain energy criterion is then used to find the preferred direction of fault propagation. The study on fault formation is subdivided into two sections representing two idealized tectonic environments: purely extensional and purely compressional. The section on extensional fault formation explains the prevalence of grabens in extensional tectonic regimes as a consequence of the stress perturbations due to slip on an initial normal fault. Slip on the initial fault produces a region of high proximity to failure at the surface of the downthrown block. A secondary fault would be expected to initiate in this region. The direction of propagation of this fault that most effectively relieves the shear stress (and therefore minimizes the total strain energy) is toward the initial fault, resulting in an antithetic orientation, or graben. The width of the graben is found to be controlled by the depth of the initial normal fault, rather than the depth to a change in material properties. The study of compressional fault formation indicates that, except for steeply-dipping faults, the presence of an initial thrust fault tends to suppress the formation of other faults in its vicinity. However, if a secondary fault initiates near an initial thrust fault, the direction in which it propagates will be influenced by the presence of the initial fault. The way in which it is influenced is dependent on the fault dip. The final part of this study examines the deformation produced by repeated earthquake cycles on the San Andreas fault in southern California. A three-dimensional, time-dependent kinematic finite element model is used to investigate the influence of slip distribution and rheological parameters on the predicted horizontal and vertical deformation. The models include depth-varying rheological properties and power-law viscoelastic behavior. The predicted deformation patterns are fairly sensitive to the parameters used in this study. Of particular importance is the calculation of vertical uplift rate since, in many cases, models that cannot be distinguished from each other on the basis of horizontal deformation may produce distinctive vertical uplift patterns.

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Continued reduction in the size of a transistor has affected the reliability of pro- cessors built using them. This is primarily due to factors such as inaccuracies while manufacturing, as well as non-ideal operating conditions, causing transistors to slow down consistently, eventually leading to permanent breakdown and erroneous operation of the processor. Permanent transistor breakdown, or faults, can occur at any point in time in the processor's lifetime. Errors are the discrepancies in the output of faulty circuits. This dissertation shows that the components containing faults can continue operating if the errors caused by them are within certain bounds. Further, the lifetime of a processor can be increased by adding supportive structures that start working once the processor develops these hard errors. This dissertation has three major contributions, namely REPAIR, FaultSim and PreFix. REPAIR is a fault tolerant system with minimal changes to the processor design. It uses an external Instruction Re-execution Unit (IRU) to perform operations, which the faulty processor might have erroneously executed. Instructions that are found to use faulty hardware are then re-executed on the IRU. REPAIR shows that the performance overhead of such targeted re-execution is low for a limited number of faults. FaultSim is a fast fault-simulator capable of simulating large circuits at the transistor level. It is developed in this dissertation to understand the effect of faults on different circuits. It performs digital logic based simulations, trading off analogue accuracy with speed, while still being able to support most fault models. A 32-bit addition takes under 15 micro-seconds, while simulating more than 1500 transistors. It can also be integrated into an architectural simulator, which added a performance overhead of 10 to 26 percent to a simulation. The results obtained show that single faults cause an error in an adder in less than 10 percent of the inputs. PreFix brings together the fault models created using FaultSim and the design directions found using REPAIR. PreFix performs re-execution of instructions on a remote core, which pick up instructions to execute using a global instruction buffer. Error prediction and detection are used to reduce the number of re-executed instructions. PreFix has an area overhead of 3.5 percent in the setup used, and the performance overhead is within 5 percent of a fault-free case. This dissertation shows that faults in processors can be tolerated without explicitly switching off any component, and minimal redundancy is sufficient to achieve the same.

The mapped area represents the eastern three-fourths of the Malad Summit Quadrangle, Idaho. It lies mainly in the Bannock Range of southeastern Idaho. The northern and southern margins of the area are 25.5 miles and 17.0 miles, respectively, north of the Idaho-Utah State Line. The Caddy Canyon Formation of Late Precambrian age is the oldest exposed stratigraphic unit. The youngest unit, exclusively of Precambrian age, is the Mutual Formation. The Brigham Formation is considered to be of Late Precambrian to Early Cambrian(?) age. Younger formations of Cambrian to Silurian age are present. The Precambrian units, as well as the Brigham, consist chiefly of quartzite. Younger Paleozoic units are primarily limestone and dolomite. The Precambrian and Paleozoic units are unconformably overlapped by the Wasatch and Salt Lake Formations of Tertiary age. A major thrust fault is widely exposed in the mapped area. It places various formations of early Paleozoic age in thrust contact with the Brigham Formation. Several minor thrust faults are also present. The thrust faulting is related to the Laramide orogeny which was active in western United States from late Jurassic into Eocene. Normal faults, in the mapped area, trend generally north-south x and east-west. The north-south faults, characteristic of the Basin and Range province, are responsible f or most of the relief in the area. The normal faulting began as early as Oligocene and has continued intermittently to the present.

Includes bibliographical references. / 1 v. (various pagings) : / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Consists of 75 published papers on structural geology and tectonics grouped into 5 broad themes -- and ore deposits; analogue modelling; extensional tectonics; thrust tectonics; and, tectonics, all presented in chronological order within the group. / Thesis (D.Sc.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, 2000

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "December, 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-48). Online version available on the World Wide Web.