This data set includes the results of digital image correlation (DIC) of two experiments on gravitational tectonics at passive margins performed at the Helmholtz Laboratory for Tectonic Modelling (HelTec) of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam in the framework of EPOS transnational access activities in 2018. The experiments aim at documenting the difference in structural evolution between two tilting scenarios: Instant versus progressive, or fast versus slow. Detailed descriptions of the experiments and results can be found in Ge et al. (2019, Geology) to which this data set is supplement. The DIC analysis yields quantitative deformation information of the experiment surfaces by means of 3D surface displacements from which strain has been calculated. The data presented here are visualized as surface uplift and strain maps, strain evolution maps and surface velocity time-series. Python scripts for visualization of data are appended. Parts of this data (see list of files) are derived from Ge et al. (2019, http://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.4.1.2019.001).
This data set includes videos depicting the surface evolution (time-lapse photography, topography data and Digital Image Correlation [DIC] analysis) of 11 analogue models, divided in three model series (A, B and C), simulating rifting and subsequent inversion tectonics. In these models we test how orthogonal or oblique extension, followed by either orthogonal or oblique compression, as well as syn-rift sedimentation, influenced the reactivation of rift structures and the development of new inversion structures. We compare these models with an intracontinental inverted basin in NE Brazil (Araripe Basin). All experiments were performed at the Tectonic Modelling Laboratory of the University of Bern (UB).
We used an experimental set-up involving two long mobile sidewalls, two rubber sidewalls (fixed between the mobile walls, closing the short model ends), and a mobile and a fixed base plate. We positioned a 5 cm high block consisting of an intercalation of foam (1 cm thick) and Plexiglas (0.5 cm thick) bars on the top of the base plates. Then we added layers of viscous and brittle analogue materials representing the ductile and brittle lower and upper crust in our experiments, which were 3 cm and 6 cm thick, respectively. A seed made of the same viscous material was positioned at the base of the brittle layer, in order to localize the formation of an initial graben in our models. The standard model deformation rate was 20 mm/h, over a duration of 2 hours for a total of 40 mm of divergence, followed by 2 hours of convergence at the same rate (except for Models B3 and C3, since the oblique rifting did not create space for 40 mm of orthogonal inversion). For syn-rift sedimentation, we applied an intercalation of feldspar and quartz sand in the graben. Model parameters and detailed description of model set-up are summarized in Table 1, and results and their interpretation can be found in Richetti et al. (2023).