8Faults can be either conduits or retarders for fluid flow. As the presence of 9 faults increases the risks for hydrocarbon exploration, the sealing behaviour 10 of a fault zone has been a focus for geological studies in the past 30 years. 11Due to the widespread occurrence of fault zones, either in extensional or 12 contractional regimes, knowledge about the fault sealing behaviour is of 13 great importance to a wide spectrum of disciplines in geosciences, for 14 instance, structural geology, geochemistry, petroleum geology, etc. 15Geologists have extensively study the sealing properties of a fault zone over 16 the last decades, ranging from fault zone architecture, fault seal types, fault 17 seal processes, fault rock classification, research methods and controlling 18 factors.

7The application of trishear, in which deformation occurs in a triangular zone in front 8 of a propagating fault tip, is often used to understand fault related folding. A key ele-9 ment of trishear, in comparison to kink-band methods, is that non-uniform defor- To illustrate the applicability of the parameter space and complex trishear models to 22 natural examples, we apply our results to a sub-surface example from the Qaidam 23 basin in northern Tibetan Plateau.

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