Abstract
An outstanding question for induced seismicity is whether the volume of injected fluid and/or the spatial extent of the resulting pore pressure and stress perturbations limit rupture size. We simulate ruptures with and without injection‐induced pore pressure perturbations, using 2‐D dynamic rupture simulations on rough faults. Ruptures are not necessarily limited by pressure perturbations when (1) background shear stress is above a critical value, or (2) pore pressure is high. Both conditions depend on fault roughness. Stress heterogeneity from fault roughness primarily determines where ruptures stop; pore pressure has a secondary effect. Ruptures may be limited by fluid volume or pressure perturbation extent when background stress and fault roughness are low, and the maximum pore pressure perturbation is less than 10% of the background effective normal stress. Future work should combine our methodology with simulation of the loading, injection, and nucleation phases to improve understanding of injection‐induced ruptures.
Recommended Citation
J. Maurer et al., "Role of Fluid Injection on Earthquake Size in Dynamic Rupture Simulations on Rough Faults," Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 47, no. 13, American Geophysical Union (AGU), Jul 2020.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088377
Department(s)
Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
Keywords and Phrases
FDMAP; Induced Seismicity; Largest Magnitude; Simulation; Triggered Seismicity; Injection
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0094-8276; 1944-8007
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2020 American Geophysical Union (AGU), All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Publication Date
16 Jul 2020
Comments
This work was funded by the Stanford Center for Induced and Triggered Seismicity at Stanford University. Simulations in this work were carried out using the computing facilities of the Center for Computational Earth and Environmental Science at Stanford University. This article is Contribution #6 from the MCTF Research Group at Missouri S&T.