N.V.Koronovsky,  V.S.Zakharov

FORMING OF THE FOREDEEPS OF NORTHERN CAUCASUS CAUSED BY STRIKE SLEEP-DISPLACEMENTS MOVEMENTS OF THE SOUTHERN EDGE OF THE SCYPHIAN PLATE

There are three foredeeps in the foreland of the Great Caucasus: West-Kubanian, East-Kubanian and Terek-Caspian, located in the back-side of the folded structures of the Great Caucasus.
Moving of the Transcaucasian microcontinent to the north in Late Miocene- Antropogene was accompanied of formation of left and right strike-sleep displacement zones. Intereaction of these zones with Southern edge of the Scythian plate has caused formation of transtension basins of the foredeeps.
	Lifted edge of the plate appeared divided on blocks like "piano keys".
	Simplified model: The dynamic of each block is defined by the balance of gravity, restoring force, friction force from the nearby blocks and viscous resistance forces.
	Friction force is a nonlinear function of relative velocity of displacing the surfaces of interacting blocks.
Results: Modeling shows that blocks of this system participates in rather complex nonperiodic oscillatory motion.
Separate blocks moves sufficiently independently and oscillate around one, two, sometimes three positions of equilibrium. Skips between this quasi-stable states divided by different gaps of time. Although all parameters of the model are known absolutely exactly, there are elements of chaos in evolution of system (deterministic chaos). The offered model explains some aspects of forming and evolutions of back-side North-Caucasus foredeeps. To see the dynamic of the system (animated GIF-file, 285 Kb)