With many types of salt structures developed in the Lower Cretaceous Aptian Formation, the passive continental marginal basins in the middle segment of the south Atlantic are hot areas of deep-water petroleum exploration. Based on analysis of differential deformations of salt structures, the influences of the inclination of subsalt slope, subsalt topographic reliefs and basement uplifting on the formation of salt structures were analyzed by physical modeling in this work. The experimental results show that the subsalt slopes in the middle West Africa basins are steeper, so the salt rock is likely to rapidly flow towards the ocean to form larger and fewer salt diapirs. In the Santos and Campos basins, the basement uplifts outside the basins are far from the provenances, which is conducive to the intrusion and accumulation of salt rock on the top of the basement uplifts. In contrast, in the middle West Africa, the basement uplifts are close to the basin margin, the residual salt layers above them are thin, and small triangular salt structures develop on both sides of the uplifts. Moreover, the uplifting of the African plate is also conducive to the full development of salt diapirs in the middle West Africa and results in large-scale thrust faults and folds in the front compressional zone.

在下白垩纪的Aptian组中形成了许多类型的盐构造，南大西洋中段的被动大陆边缘盆地是深水石油勘探的热点地区。在分析盐构造差异变形的基础上，通过物理模拟分析了盐下坡度，盐下地形起伏和基底隆升对盐构造形成的影响。实验结果表明，西非中部盆地的盐下斜坡较陡，因此盐岩很可能会迅速流向海洋，形成更大，更少的盐底。在桑托斯和坎波斯盆地，盆地外部的地下隆起远离物源，这有利于盐岩在地下隆起顶部的侵入和堆积。相反，在西非中部，基底隆起靠近盆地边缘，其上的残留盐层很薄，隆起的两侧都形成了小的三角形盐构造。此外，非洲板块的隆升也有利于西非中部盐底物的充分发育，并导致大的逆冲断层和前压缩带褶皱。