Abstract:
With increasing evidence showing significant inclination shallowing in red beds, it is important to develop useful tools to detecting and correcting inclination errors for haematite-bearing sedimentary rocks. Theoretically, any deviation of magnetization from the ambient magnetic field can be described by a preferred orientation distribution (OD) of unique axes of the anisotropic magnetic particles. Based on Stephenson's continuous particle OD function, magnetic anisotropy parameters of a bulk sample and inclination-correction equations were derived considering all the magnetic particles in a sample. In addition to our new equations for correcting red bed inclination error, the results also confirm the inclination correction of Jackson et al. for magnetite-bearing samples, which is based on a simple, discrete-particle OD model used by Stephenson et al. to show their derivations, suggesting that the inclination correction is probably independent of the particle OD models.