Publications associées à Fast-moving dislocations trigger flash weakening in carbonate-bearing faults during earthquakes

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

Fault roughness controls injection-induced seismicity

Lei Wang, Simon Guérin-Marthe

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

Numerical Modeling of FRP-Strengthened Masonry Structures Using Equivalent Frame Models

Katrin Beyer, Francesco Vanin, Ivana Bozulic

The present study focuses on enhancing the seismic resistance of existing masonry structures. To that aim, the use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) strengthening serves to improve structural behaviour by attaching FRP strips to the masonry walls. Despite ...

Springer2024

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

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

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

Shearing and opening of a pre-existing discontinuity in response to fluid injection

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Ankit Gupta, Alexis Alejandro Sáez Uribe

We investigate the fluid-driven growth of a shear crack along a frictional discontinuity and its transition to hydraulic fracturing (sometimes referred to as hydraulic jacking) under plane-strain conditions. We focus on the case of a constant friction coef ...

2023

Nucleation, propagation, and scale dependence of laboratory frictional ruptures; implications for earthquake mechanics

Federica Paglialunga

Earthquakes are natural phenomena that cause ground shaking and damage to people and infrastructures. Despite significant progress achieved in understanding how earthquakes start, propagate, and arrest, many aspects of their physics and mechanics remain no ...

EPFL2023

Shear strength and shear stiffness analysis of compacted Wyoming-type bentonite

Alessio Ferrari

Wyoming-type bentonite is one of the materials to be used as part of the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) in deep geological disposal facilities for the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel.In the KBS-3 type repository, the canisters containing the spent fue ...

ELSEVIER2023

Microscopic Digital Image Correlation Analysis of Strain Distributions in Stainless Steel 316L Induced by Multiaxial Cyclic Loading

Elif Cansu Kursun

Fatigue damage in materials results in localized strain at the microstructural level. In many engineering components of the cooling circuits of nuclear power plants, where austenitic steels are used, the material experiences multiaxial cyclic loading, eith ...

EPFL2023

Influence of the shear stress on fine sediment exchanges with the substrate using UVP measurements

Giovanni De Cesare, Romain Maxime Dubuis

The dynamic of fine sediment in rivers is closely related to the interactions between fine particles, the riverbed and the flow conditions. The accumulation of fine sediment in the riverbed reduces vertical water exchanges and can have detrimental effects ...

2023

A fully-coupled highly-parallelized geomechanical simulator for assessing induced seismicity

Jean-François Molinari, Guillaume Anciaux, Nicolas Richart, Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Emil Gallyamov

Induced seismicity caused by anthropogenic modification of the subsurface effective stress state has been observed in a number of industrial applications -- from hydrocarbon extraction (e.g., Groningen [1]), drilling waste-water disposal (e.g., [2]) to the ...

2023

Study of backward Brillouin scattering in gas-filled anti-resonant fibers

Luc Thévenaz, Li Zhang, Malak Mohamed Hossameldeen Omar Mohamed Galal

Brillouin scattering in gas shows unmatched gain properties in hollow-core optical fibers filled at high pressure. Here, the gain characteristics are studied for two common gases, namely, N2 and CO2, which show distinct features and are compared to expecte ...

2023

The use of ductile steel fuses for the seismic protection of acceleration sensitive non- structural components: Numerical and Experimental verification

Dimitrios Lignos, Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed Elkady

Recent seismic events have showcased the vulnerability of non-structural components to even low- or moderate-intensity earthquakes that occur far more frequently than design-basis ones. Thus, community-critical buildings, such as hospitals, telecommunicati ...

EEME2023

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

Long-term triggered seismicity on the Mosha fault by Damavand volcano, Iran: Implications on the seismic hazard of Tehran metropolis

Seyyedmaalek Momeni

The seismic history of the Mosha fault, the largest and most active fault of Eastern Tehran metropolis, and its relation to the Damavand active volcano, the highest mountain in the Middle East, is investigated. We deduce that the central Mosha, near the Da ...

2022

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

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

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

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

Seismic events miss important kinematically governed grain scale mechanisms during shear failure of porous rock

Edward Carlo Giorgio Andò

Catastrophic failure in brittle, porous materials initiates when smaller-scale fractures localise along an emergent fault zone in a transition from stable crack growth to dynamic rupture. Due to the rapid nature of this critical transition, the precise mic ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Deformation twinning mechanism in magnesium at the microscale: strain rate, temperature and orientation effects

Nicolò Maria Della Ventura

The project aims to validate some recent theoretical developments on the deformation twinning nucleation mechanism in HCP metals through small-scale mechanic experiments. To this end, a systematic investigation of the mechanical response of pure magnesium ...

EPFL2022