Crystallographic and magnetic preferred orientation of hematite in banded iron ores

The crystallographic preferred orientation of hematite in banded iron ores and the orientation of both the measured and the calculated principal susceptibility axes are strongly related. The maximum susceptibility is aligned with the lineation and the pole of the foliation coincides with the minimum susceptibility, although there are often distinct differences between the measured and calculated values of the susceptibilities. A wide variety of configurations of c-axis pole figures modeled by varying the parameters of the Bingham distribution and Bingham–Mardia-distribution reveal that quite different c-axis patterns of hematite ores may have the same anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility (AMS) parameters. Large deviations between calculated and experimental AMS-data should initiate further investigations to resolve a probably unnoticed heterogeneity of the fabric. The present investigations show that the structural analysis of the preferred orientation of hematite ores by means of the rather inexpensive and fast magnetic method must be accompanied by the more expensive but unambiguous determination of preferred orientation by x-ray and neutron diffraction experiments in order to accomplish a complete and sound interpretation.