Publications by François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Frictional weakening leads to unconventional singularities during dynamic rupture propagation

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

Earthquakes i.e. frictional ruptures, are commonly described by singular solutions of shear crack motions. These solutions assume a square root singularity order around the rupture tip and a constant shear stress value behind it, implying scale-independent ...

2024

Influence of Viscous Lubricant on Nucleation and Propagation of Frictional Ruptures

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Federica Paglialunga

Fluids are pervasive in the Earth's crust and saturate fractures and faults. The combination of fluids and gouge layers developing along faults can generate fluids of different viscosities. Such viscous fluids were found to influence the reactivation, fric ...

2023

Determination of Parameters Characteristic of Dynamic Weakening Mechanisms During Seismic Faulting in Cohesive Rocks

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Chiara Cornelio, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

While sliding at seismic slip-rates of ∼1 m/s, natural faults undergo an abrupt decrease of shear stress called dynamic weakening. Asperity-scale processes related to flash heating and weakening and, meso-scale (mm-cm) processes involving shear across the ...

AGU2022

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

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

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

The influence of roughness on experimental fault mechanical behaviour and associated microseismicity

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Barnaby Padraig Fryer, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Carolina Giorgetti, Seyyedmaalek Momeni

Fault surfaces are rough at all scales, this significantly affecting fault-slip behaviour. However, roughness is only occasionally considered experimentally and then often in experiments imposing a low slip velocity, corresponding to the initiation stage o ...

2022

Brittle faulting of ductile rock induced by pore fluid pressure build‐up

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Under upper crustal conditions, deformations are primarily brittle (i.e., localized) and accommodated by frictional mechanisms. At greater depth, deformations are ductile (i.e., distributed) and accommodated by crystal plasticity, diffusion mass transfer o ...

2021

Origin of the Co‐Seismic Variations of Elastic Properties in the Crust: Insight From the Laboratory

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Mateo Alejandro Acosta, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Federica Paglialunga

Seismological observations highlighted that earthquakes are often followed by changes in elastic properties around the fault zone. Here, we studied the origin of these variations using stick-slip experiments on saw-cut granite samples presenting different ...

2021

Experimental plastic reactivation of pseudotachylyte‐filled shear zones

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Pseudotachylytes are fine‐grained fault rocks that solidify from melt that is produced in fault zones during earthquakes. Exposed sections of natural fault zones reveal evidence of post‐seismic plastic deformation (i.e. reactivation) of pseudotachylyte, wh ...

2021

Fault Stability Across the Seismogenic Zone

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Across the seismogenic zone, the transition from brittle to plastic deformation corresponds to a semibrittle regime where brittle fracturing and plastic flow coexist at high strength conditions. Thorough experimental investigations on brittle-plastic trans ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2020

Initial effective stress controls the nature of earthquakes

Fabian Barras, Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Modern geophysics highlights that the slip behaviour response of faults is variable in space and time and can result in slow or fast ruptures. However, the origin of this variation of the rupture velocity in nature as well as the physics behind it is still ...

Nature Research2020

Fault's hydraulic diffusivity enhancement during injection induced fault reactivation: application of pore pressure diffusion inversions to laboratory injection experiments

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

In situ observations of fluid induced fault slip reactivation, as well as the analysis of induced seismicity have demonstrated the complexity of fluid-fault interactions under geological conditions. If fluid flow commonly reactivates faults in the form of ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2020

Pseudotachylyte Alteration and the Rapid Fade of Earthquake Scars From the Geological Record

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Tectonic pseudotachylytes are solidified frictional melts produced on faults during earthquakes and are robust markers of seismic slip events. Nonetheless, pseudotachylytes are apparently uncommon fault rocks, because they are either rarely produced or are ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2020

From fault creep to slow and fast earthquakes in carbonates

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

A major part of the seismicity striking the Mediterranean area and other regions worldwide is hosted in carbonate rocks. Recent examples are the destructive earthquakes of L'Aquila (M-w 6.1) in 2009 and Norcia (M-w 6.5) in 2016 in central Italy. Surprising ...

Geological Society of America2019

Can Precursory Moment Release Scale With Earthquake Magnitude? A View From the Laboratory

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Mateo Alejandro Acosta, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Today, earthquake precursors remain debated. While precursory slow slip is an important feature of earthquake nucleation, foreshock sequences are not always observed, and their temporal evolution remains poorly constrained. We report on laboratory earthqua ...

2019

Origin of High-Frequency Radiation During Laboratory Earthquakes

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

We monitor dynamic rupture propagation during laboratory stick-slip experiments performed on saw-cut Westerly granite under upper crustal conditions (10-90 MPa). Spectral analysis of high-frequency acoustic waveforms provided evidence that energy radiation ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2019

Fault reactivation during fluid pressure oscillations: transition from stable to unstable slip

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Carolina Giorgetti

High‐pressure fluid injection in deep geo‐reservoirs can induce earthquakes. Recent observations suggest that cyclic injections might trigger less seismicity than monotonic injections. Here, we report triaxial laboratory experiments conducted on faulted qu ...

2019

Effect of water and rock composition on re-strengthening of cohesive faults during the deceleration phase of seismic slip pulses

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Chiara Cornelio, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

2019

Effect of fluid viscosity on fault reactivation and co‐seismic weakening

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Chiara Cornelio, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

High‐viscosity fluids are often used during hydraulic fracking operations in geo‐reservoirs. Here, we performed dedicated experiments to study the influence of fluid viscosity on fault reactivation and associated induced earthquakes. Experiments were condu ...

2019

The development of stress-induced anisotropy during cyclic loading of Westerly granite

Lucas Xan Pimienta, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

2018

Frictional Instabilities and Carbonation of Basalts Triggered by Injection of Pressurized H2O- and CO2 - Rich Fluids

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

2018