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Sills, saucer‐shaped sills, and cone sheets are fundamental magma conduits in many sedimentary basins worldwide. Models of their emplacement usually approximate the host rock properties as purely elastic and consider the plastic deformation to be negligible. However, many field observations suggest that inelastic damage and shear fracturing play a significant role during sill emplacement. Here we use a rigid plasticity approach, through limit analysis modeling, to study the conditions required for inelastic deformation of sill overburdens. Our models produce distinct shear failure structures that resemble intrusive bodies, such as cone sheets and saucer‐shaped sills. This suggests that shear damage greatly controls the transition from flat sill to inclined sheets. We derive an empirical scaling law of the critical overpressure required for shear failure of the sill's overburden. This scaling law allows to predict the critical sill diameter at which shear failure of the overburden occurs, which matches the diameters of natural saucer‐shaped intrusions' inner sills. A quantitative comparison between our shear failure model and the established sill's tensile propagation mechanism suggests that sills initially propagate as tensile fractures, until reaching a critical diameter at which shear failure of the overburden controls the subsequent emplacement of the magma. This comparison also allows us to predict, for the first time, the conditions of emplacement of both conical intrusions, saucer‐shaped intrusions, and large concordant sills. Beyond the application to sills, our study suggests that shear failure significantly controls the emplacement of igneous sheet intrusions in the Earth's brittle crust.

Contractional sandbox experiments that simulate crustal accretion and direct shear tests both provide direct data on the amount of work required to create faults (W prop) in granular materials. Measurements of force changes associated with faulting reveal the work consumed by fault growth, which can be used to predict fault growth path and timing. Within the contractional experiments, the sequence and style of early faulting is consistent for the range of sand pack thicknesses tested, from 12 to 30 mm. Contrary to expectations that W prop is only a material property, the experimental data show that for the same material, W prop increases with sand pack thickness. This normal stress dependence stems from the frictional nature of granular materials. With the same static and sliding friction values, incipient faults initiated deeper in the sand pack have larger shear stress drops, due to increased normal compression, σ n. For CV32 sand, the relationship between W prop and σ n, calculated from the force drop data as W prop (J/m 2) = 2.0x10-4 (m) σ n (Pa), is consistent with the relationship calculated from direct shear test data as W prop (J/m 2) = 2.4x10-4 (m) σ n (Pa). Testing of different materials within the contractional sandbox (fine sand and glass beads) shows the sensitivity of W prop to material properties. Both material properties and normal stress should be considered in calculations of the work consumed by fault growth in both analog experiments and crustal fault systems.