Repeating earthquakes induced during a decameter-scale hydraulic stimulation experiment at the Grimsel Test Site, Switzerland

We performed a similarity based hierarchical cluster analysis and carried out a master event relative relocation of seismicity induced during the hydraulic stimulation of a brittle and highly fractured shear zone. The shear zone was stimulated in an extend of about 10 m and is located in crystalline rock at the Grimsel Test Site, Switzerland. The objective of the experiment was to improve our understanding of stimulation processes associated with high-pressure fluid injections used for reservoir creation in enhanced geothermal systems. In addition to the seismic network exhibiting high spherical coverage at close distances (i.e., eight acoustic emission sensors ~10 – 15 m away from the injection interval), fluid pressures, rock mass deformations and fault dislocations were monitored around the injection location. 1/3 of the located seismic events could be assigned to 44 repeater families exhibiting high waveform similarity (i.e., >95%) when comparing waveform similarities sequentially in time. When comparing similarities to the chosen master event, similarities decay continuously within a repeater family which also reflects in a spatial migration of hypocenters. However, source areas of seismic events within repeater families mostly overlap assuming an appropriate stress drop. But the spatial extent of the observed migration of hypocenters compared to the measured mechanical deformation in the volume is larger and thus suggests that multiple asperities are responsible for seismic events within a repeater family. The repeater families themselves are distributed in clusters which are attributed to the stimulation of distinct fractures in the damage zone of the targeted shear zone. No repeating events were found in the seismicity accompanying a tensile fracture splaying off the stimulated pre-existing fractures. Statistically, events of repeater families are rather Gaussian than power-law distributed. The extended analysis of this multisensor array data presented here reveals a highly complex fracturing process on the 10 m scale during hydraulic stimulation (see also an earlier study of the same experiment focusing on source mechanism Villiger et al. (2021)).

 

References

Villiger, L., Gischig, V. S., Kwiatek, G., Krietsch, H., Doetsch, J., Jalali, M., Amann, F., Giardini, D., & Wiemer, S. (2021). Meter-scale stress heterogeneities and stress redistribution drive complex fracture slip and fracture growth during a hydraulic stimulation experiment. Geophysical Journal International. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggab057 (Geophysical Journal International)