Publications de Marie Estelle Solange Violay

Fluid Chemistry Effect on Localized and Ductile Deformation of a Porous Sandstone

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer, Francesco Lazari

In geological reservoirs, pore fluid chemistry can affect rock strength by inducing mineral dissolution, precipitation, and alteration, among other processes. Increasing pressure and temperature can shift deformation from localized to ductile, decreasing p ...

2025

How Stress Biaxiality Controls Crack Morphology and Apparent Fracture Energy of Dikes and Sills

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Antoine Guggisberg

The emplacement of dikes and sills plays a crucial role in crustal mechanics. The parameter used to describe their resistance to propagation, fracture energy, remains controversial. Here, we show how different stress biaxiality levels experienced by dikes ...

2025

Alteration's Control on Frictional Behavior and the Depth of the Ductile Shear Zone in Geothermal Reservoirs in Volcanic Arcs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Barnaby Padraig Fryer, Florian Till Jermann, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer

The majority of geothermal energy is produced in tectonically active volcanic-arc regions due to their high geothermal gradients. Reservoirs in these settings are often stratified with smectite/kaolinite-, illite-, and chlorite-rich zones, in order of incr ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2025

The Influence of Micro- and Macrocracks on the Permeability of Granite

Marie Estelle Solange Violay

Damage zones exist around crustal faults, where micro- and macrocracks coexist and form a complex conduit network for fluid flow. The permeability of these zones can change rapidly as the crack network evolves during deformation. To investigate the relativ ...

SPRINGER WIEN2024

Permeability partitioning through the brittle-to-ductile transition and its implications for supercritical geothermal reservoirs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer

Geothermal projects utilizing supercritical water (≥400 °C) could boost power output tenfold compared to conventional plants. However, these reservoirs commonly occur in crustal areas where rocks are semi-ductile or ductile, impeding large-scale fractures ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2024

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

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

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

Off-fault deformation feedback and strain localization precursor during laboratory earthquakes

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Carolina Giorgetti, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer, Simon Guérin-Marthe

Recent large-scale seismological observations have shown that off-fault strain localization and foreshock migration could serve as an early warning of an impending earthquake. However, this process is still largely unknown. In this study, state-of-the-art ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2024

Compaction and Permeability Evolution of Tuffs From Krafla Volcano (Iceland)

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer, Alexandra Roma Larisa Kushnir, Francesco Lazari

Pressure and stress perturbations associated with volcanic activity and geothermal production can modify the porosity and permeability of volcanic rock, influencing hydrothermal convection, the distribution of pore fluids and pressures, and the ease of mag ...

American Geophysical Union (AGU)2024

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

Single-Well Pore Pressure Preconditioning for Enhanced Geothermal System Stimulation

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Barnaby Padraig Fryer, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain

The stress state is an important parameter in terms of both earthquake nucleation and rupture. Here, a new stimulation technique is proposed for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGSs), which have previously been burdened with a number of high-profile incidence ...

2023

A new high-pressure high-temperature deformation apparatus to study the brittle to ductile transition in rocks

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Mateo Alejandro Acosta, Henri Joseph François Gilles Leclère, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer

Understanding the micro-mechanisms underlying the localized-ductile transition (LDT) as well as the brittle-plastic transition (BPT) has become crucial for our wider understanding of crustal processes and seismicity. Given how difficult in situ observation ...

2023

Bounding the localized to ductile transition in porous rocks: implications for geo-reservoirs

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Gabriel Gérard Dominique Meyer

Porous rocks have long been the focus of intense research driven by their importance in our society as host to our most essential resources (oil, gas, water, geothermal energy, etc), yet their rheology remains poorly understood. With increasing depth, poro ...

2023

The influence of water-saturation on the strength of volcanic rocks and the stability of lava domes

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Michael Heap

The rocks forming a volcanic edifice or dome are typically saturated or partially-saturated with water. However, most experiments aimed at better understanding the mechanical behaviour of volcanic rocks have been performed on dry samples, and therefore mos ...

2023

Fluid flow through microcracked and fractured granitic reservoirs

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

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

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

Luis Felipe Orellana Espinoza, Marie Estelle Solange Violay, 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

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

A multi-disciplinary view on earthquake science

Marie Estelle Solange Violay

Earthquakes are a natural hazard affecting millions of people globally every year. Researchers are working on understanding the mechanisms of earthquakes and how we can predict them from various angles, such as experimental work, theoretical modeling, and ...

Nature Portfolio2022

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