Concept

Fracture (geology)

Related publications (143)

Mechanics of alkali-silica reaction in concrete across scales

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

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

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

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

On the Scale Dependence in the Dynamics of Frictional Rupture

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

When an earthquake nucleates in the earth crust, the potential energy accumulated during the inter-seismic period is released into breakdown work, heat energy and radiated energy. Often the breakdown work is considered a seismological equivalent of the fra ...

2021

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

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

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

Limiting Regimes of a Three-Dimensional Buoyant Hydraulic Fracture Emerging from a Point Source

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Andreas Möri

Buoyant hydraulic fractures occur in nature as magmatic dikes and sills. In industrial applications like well stimulation, the emergence of buoyant fractures is undesirable and often limited by the injected volume and/or variation of in-situ stress. This c ...

2021

The breakthrough time of a hydraulic fracture contained between two tough layers

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Carlo Peruzzo, Judith Marie Colette Capron

Hydraulic fracturing is a widespread technology used to enhance reservoir production but also to measure the in-situ stress field. It consists of growing a tensile (mode I) fracture via the injection of a viscous fluid (usually at a constant rate) from a w ...

2021

Arrest of a radial hydraulic fracture upon shut-in of the injection

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Andreas Möri

We investigate the propagation and arrest of a radial hydraulic fracture upon the end of the injection. Depending on the regime of propagation at the time of shut-in of the injection, excess elastic energy may be stored in the surrounding medium. Once the ...

2021

On the effects of fluid pressure variations on rock-mass and fault mechanical behaviour

Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël

In the past 20 years, the growing interest in deep geo-reservoirs for purposes such as carbon storage, waste water disposal, or geothermal energy exploitation have led to large-volume fluid injections into the upper continental crust. These fluid injection ...

EPFL2021

Effect of water on sandstone's fracture toughness and frictional parameters: Brittle strength constraints

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël

Water presence causes a dramatic reduction of sandstone strength. Under compressive stress conditions, the strength of a rock sample is controlled by frictional parameters and the fracture toughness of the material. Here, we report fracture toughness, fric ...

2021

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