EGU2020-6643
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-6643
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Hydro-mechanical modeling of seismogenic asperity loaded by aseismic slip through TOUGH-BIEM simulation

Hideo Aochi1,2 and Jonny Rutqvist3
Hideo Aochi and Jonny Rutqvist
  • 1BRGM, DRP/SPU, Orleans Cedex 2, France (h.aochi@brgm.fr)
  • 2Laboratoire de Géologie, l'Ecole Normale Supérieure/CNRS UMR8538, PSL Research Univ., Paris, France
  • 3Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

We consider seismogenic asperities loaded by aseismic slip on a fault, which is induced by fluid circulation, as a simple example of fault reactivation. For this purpose, we combine two methods. The TOUGH2 (Transport Of Unsaturated Ground water and Heat) code is used for modeling the pore pressure evolution within a fault and then a Boundary Integral Equation Method (BIEM) is applied for simulating fault slip, including aseismic slip on the entire fault plane and fast slip on seismogenic asperities. The fault permeability is assumed stress-dependent and therefore is not constant but varies during a simulation. We adopt the Coulomb friction and a cyclic slip-strengthening-then-weakening friction model governing the fault slip, which allows for repeated asperity slip. We were able to demonstrate the entire process from the fluid injection, pore pressure increase, aseismic slip to seismogenic asperity slip. We tested a step-like increase of injection rate with time, which is common for hydraulic fracturing and reservoir stimulation at deep geothermal sites. Under this configuration, the pore pressure increase is not proportional to the injection rate, as the permeability depends on the stress.  Fault slip on seismogenic asperities is triggered repeatedly by surrounding aseismic slip. We find, in a given example, that the reccurence of the fast slip on asperity is approximatively proportional to the injected fluid volume, inferring that the aseismic slip amount increases proporitionally to the fluid volume as well.

How to cite: Aochi, H. and Rutqvist, J.: Hydro-mechanical modeling of seismogenic asperity loaded by aseismic slip through TOUGH-BIEM simulation, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-6643, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-6643, 2020