Publications related to Fracture (geology)

Fault roughness controls injection-induced seismicity

Surface roughness ubiquitously prevails in natural faults across various length scales. Despite extensive studies highlighting the important role of fault geometry in the dynamics of tectonic earthquakes, whether and how fault roughness affects fluid-induc ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

Water weakening and the compressive brittle strength of carbonates: Influence of fracture toughness and static friction

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, Barnaby Padraig Fryer

Water is ubiquitous within the pore space of rocks and has been shown to affect their physical and mechanical behaviour. Indeed, water can act on the rock strength via mechanical (i.e., reducing the effective stresses) or chemical effects (e.g., mineral di ...

2024

Three-dimensional hydraulic fracture propagation in homogeneous and heterogeneous media

Carlo Peruzzo

Hydraulic fractures are tensile fractures that occur in solid materials due to the natural intrusion or anthropogenic injection of a viscous fluid into a fracture channel. The deliberate creation of hydraulic fractures is part of an industrial technology h ...

EPFL2023

Propagation of planar three-dimensional buoyant hydraulic fractures

Andreas Möri

Hydraulic fractures are driven by an internal fluid pressure exceeding the minimum compressive stress, propagating in a direction perpendicular to the latter. This class of tensile fractures has gained interest over the last fifty years due to the developm ...

EPFL2023

INFLUENCE OF VOIDS ON THICK DCB JOINT BEHAVIOR

Véronique Michaud, Anastasios Vassilopoulos, Jialiang Fan

The influence of voids on the quasi-static Mode I fracture performance of thick adhesive joints was investigated in this article. Double Cantilever Beam (DCB) joints were manufactured with glass fiber reinforced epoxy adherends and SikaPower®-830 epoxy adh ...

2023

Fluid flow through microcracked and fractured granitic reservoirs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Lucille Jocelyne Nadine Carbillet, Michael Heap

The permeability of crustal rocks and rock-masses dictates the efficiency of hydrothermal circulation and therefore the productivity of geothermal resources. In this study, we find by monitoring P-wave velocity that thermal microcracking in Lanhélin granit ...

2023

Reactivation of variably sealed joints and permeability enhancement in geothermal reservoir rocks

Alexandra Roma Larisa Kushnir, Michael Heap

Hydraulic stimulation of enhanced deep geothermal reservoirs commonly targets pre-existing joint networks with the goal of increasing reservoir permeability. Here, we study the permeability and strength of joint-free and jointed Buntsandstein sandstones fr ...

2023

Three-dimensional fluid-driven frictional ruptures: theory and applications

Alexis Alejandro Sáez Uribe

Fluid-driven frictional ruptures are important in a broad range of subsurface engineering technologies and natural earthquake-related phenomena. Some examples of subsurface operations where borehole fluid injections can induce frictional slip are deep geot ...

EPFL2023

Arrest Mechanisms of Buoyant Hydraulic Fractures

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Andreas Möri, Carlo Peruzzo, Dmitriy Garagash

Hydraulic fracturing (HF) treatments can form widespread fractures. Understanding their containment at depth is critical, given the positive buoyancy contrast between the fracturing fluid and the surrounding rock, promoting upward growth. We study arrest m ...

American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA), OnePetro2023

Elongated hydraulic fracture emerging from layers of alternating fracture toughness

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Carlo Peruzzo

Whether used to enhance the hydrocarbon production from low permeability rocks or to measure the minimum in-situ principal stress in rock formations, height growth of a hydraulic fracture above the formation of interest is a key metric for the design of su ...

2023

Experimental Investigation of Hydraulic Fracture Closure in a Porous Sandstone

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Seyyedmaalek Momeni, Mohsen Talebkeikhah, Guanyi Lu

Depending on the type of fracture propagation regime when the injection stops, the closure of the fracture may occur exactly after the injection ceases, in the case where the fracturing process is dominated by fracture energy, or the fracture propagate for ...

Onepetro2022

Experimental investigation of hydraulic fracture growth in an anisotropic rock with pre-existing discontinuities under different propagation regimes

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Seyyedmaalek Momeni, Guanyi Lu

Laboratory experiments have been carried out to investigate the growth of hydraulic fracture (HF) in an anisotropic rock with pre-existing discontinuities such as bedding planes and veins. The experiments are designed in light of scaling relationships that ...

2022

On the scale dependence in the dynamics of frictional rupture: Constant fracture energy versus size-dependent breakdown work

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, Federica Paglialunga, Fabian Barras

Potential energy stored during the inter-seismic period by tectonic loading around faults is released during earthquakes as radiated energy, frictional dissipation and fracture energy. The latter is of first importance since it is expected to control the n ...

2022

Transition from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Bertil Trottet, Grégoire Bobillier, Alec van Herwijnen

Avalanches can occur when a porous snow layer lies beneath a dense cohesive snow slab. Field experiments and simulations now reveal different crack-propagation regimes in slab avalanches, similar to rupture propagation following an earthquake. ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

The Permeability of Porous Volcanic Rock Through the Brittle-Ductile Transition

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer, Michael Heap

The permeability of volcanic rock controls the distribution of pore fluids and pore fluid pressure within a volcanic edifice, and is therefore considered to influence eruptive style and volcano deformation. We measured the porosity and permeability of a po ...

2022

Physical characterization of fault rocks within the Opalinus Clay formation

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Luis Felipe Orellana Espinoza, Christophe Nussbaum

Near-surface disposal of radioactive waste in shales is a promising option to safeguard the population and environment. However, natural faults intersecting these geological formations can potentially affect the long-term isolation of the repositories. Thi ...

Nature Research2022

Prediction of crack nucleation and propagation in porous ceramics using the phase-field approach

Arata Nakajo

The relevance of the phase-field approach to simulate the fracture in porous ceramics has been investigated. For this purpose, the conditions for the crack initiation using the phase-field model have been compared to the theoretical predictions of the coup ...

ELSEVIER2022

Understanding the mechanisms of adhesive wear for heterogeneous materials through atomistic simulations

Jean-François Molinari, Antonio Joaquin Garcia Suarez, Sacha Zenon Wattel

When two rough surfaces slide against each other, two main behaviors can be observed at the asperity level: A ductile behavior where the asperities tend to smooth out or a brittle behavior where the asperities detach and form debris. Recently, a critical l ...

2022

Mechanics of alkali-silica reaction in concrete across scales

Emil Gallyamov

Alkali-silica reaction occurs in concrete between the alkalis contained in the pore solution and silica in the aggregates. Generation of ASR products gives rise to the internal pressures that cause expansion and cracking. Due to its deleterious effect on c ...

EPFL2022

Hydraulic fracture growth in quasi-brittle materials

Dong Liu

Hydraulic fracturing is a technique often used in the oil and gas industry to enhance the production of wells in low-permeability reservoirs. It consists of fluid injection at a sufficiently large injection rate to create and propagate tensile fractures in ...

EPFL2021