Related papers: Fault gouge failure induced by fluid injection: Hy…
Friction plays a fundamental role in many natural processes, including earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes occur when highly compressed fault surfaces accumulate large enough shear stresses, causing the faults to…
Anticipating the maximum magnitude of injection-triggered earthquakes is highly valuable for the safe and efficient exploitation of geoenergies. The recent work by Li et al.(2021) reached the conclusion that unexpectedly large…
A fundamental mystery in earthquake physics is ``how can an earthquake be triggered by distant seismic sources?'' Here, we use discrete element method simulations of a granular layer, during stick-slip, that is subject to transient…
Fault-zone fluids control effective normal stress and fault strength. While most earthquake models assume a fixed pore fluid pressure distribution, geologists have documented fault valving behavior, that is, cyclic changes in pressure and…
Studying the effect of mechanical perturbations on granular systems is crucial for understanding soil stability, avalanches, and earthquakes. We investigate a granular system as a laboratory proxy for fault gouge. When subjected to a slow…
Earthquakes induced during hydraulic fracturing operations have occurred in a number of locales. However, in-situ studies aimed to discern the triggering mechanism remains exclusively statistical in their nature. Here, we calculate the…
Frictional instabilities in fluid saturated granular materials underlie natural hazards, including submarine landslides and earthquake initiation. Experiments show distinct failure behaviors under subaerial and subaqueous conditions due to…
Fluid pressure and flow in the crust is a key parameter controlling earthquake physics. Since earthquake slip is linked to spatio-temporal localisation of deformation, it is expected that the localised fluid pressure around the fault plane…
Sheared granular layers undergoing stick slip behavior are broadly employed to study the physics and dynamics of earthquakes. Here, a two dimensional implementation of the combined finite discrete element method (FDEM), which merges the…
We study experimentally the fluctuations of deformation along a shear fault naturally emerging within a compressed frictional granular medium. Using laser interferometry, we show that the deformation inside this granular gouge occurs as a…
Fault zones mature through the accumulation of earthquakes and the wearing of contact asperities at multiple scales. This study examines how wear-induced gouge production affects the evolution of fault seismicity, focusing on earthquake…
Microscale granular sliding within fault gouge is fundamental to earthquake nucleation, yet the mechanism by which temperature affects friction through interfacial water remains poorly understood. Here, large-scale molecular dynamics…
The coupled mechanics of fluid-filled granular media controls the behavior of many natural systems such as saturated soils, fault gouge, and landslides. The grain motion and the fluid pressure influence each other: It is well established…
Shear rupture and fault slip in crystalline rocks like granite produce large dilation, impacting the spatiotemporal evolution of fluid pressure in the crust during the seismic cycle. To explore how fluid pressure variations are coupled to…
Seismic faults release the stress accumulated during tectonic movement through rapid ruptures or slow slip events. The slow slip events play a crucial role in the seismic cycle as they impact the occurrence of earthquakes. However, the…
The localization of slow and fast slip in fault gouges may play a crucial role in understanding the mechanics of earthquakes and slow slip events. Here, we investigate the fracture energy accompanying this localization and the subsequent…
Slow earthquakes differ from regular earthquakes in their slower moment release and size distribution dominated by smaller events. However, the physical origin of these slow earthquake statistics remains controversial. In this work, we…
According to the acoustic fluidization hypothesis, elastic waves at a characteristic frequency form inside seismic faults even in the absence of an external perturbation. These waves are able to generate a normal stress which contrasts the…
We investigate the propagation of fluid-driven fault slip on a slip-weakening frictional interface separating two identical half-spaces of a three-dimensional elastic solid. Our focus is on axisymmetric circular shear ruptures as they…
The burgeoning need to sequester anthropogenic CO$_2$ for climate mitigation and the need for energy sustenance leading upto enhanced geothermal energy production has made it incredibly critical to study potential earthquakes due to fluid…