The influence of fluid pressure on the phase transition of brittle faulting

Recent observations of large earthquakes document the progressive localization of rock damage around future rupture zones that is also coupled with the spatial migration of foreshock sequences (Kato & Ben-Zion, 2020). This implies that the precursory deformation may act as a potential tracer for preparatory process that result in large earthquakes. It has also been observed that self-organization of the localized damage regions can govern the eventual macroscopic brittle failure in geomaterials (Renard et al., 2019). How the presence of fluid controls the self-organized precursory deformation along localized damage zone remains an open question. In this study, we have performed two triaxial compression experiments on dry and water saturated Berea sandstone, using distributed strain sensing (DSS) technology to visualize the strain field on the sample surface (Salazar Vásquez et al., 2022) with high spatial resolution. By tracking components of the strain field, specifically the region on the sample that sustained the largest incremental change in strain, we tested the effect of fluid on the predictability of phase transition between intact and failed state, under the context of critical hypothesis. Strain was progressively localized around the eventual faulting region for both samples, while a slow faulting was observed in the wet sample accompanied by a diffuse deformation pattern and unstable crack nucleation at failure. The results showed that, the failure in the dry sample was preceded by a critical power law acceleration of the largest increment, thus the dynamic faulting occurred in a well-defined singularity. The strain distribution also provided evidence for a predictable evolution of precursors. In contrast, the wet test showed evidence for a first-order transition with an exponential increase in largest increment, leading to an abrupt failure with a transient increase of strain. We interpreted this abrupt transition to be due to the increasing dominance of fluid-driven subcritical crack growth in the faulting. In this process, the local stress at crack tips decreases with crack lengthening, hence impeding the crack interaction and leading to an abrupt development of fault network. Our observation unravels the mechanisms of precursory deformation with fluid-assisted subcritical cracking, which has important implication in forecasting large earthquakes in nature.

 

References:

Kato, A., & Ben-Zion, Y. (2020). The generation of large earthquakes. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2(1), 26–39. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-00108-w

Renard, F., McBeck, J., Kandula, N., Cordonnier, B., Meakin, P., & Ben-Zion, Y. (2019). Volumetric and shear processes in crystalline rock approaching faulting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(33), 16234–16239. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902994116

Salazar Vásquez, A., Rabaiotti, C., Germanovich, L. N., & Puzrin, A. M. (2022). Distributed Fiber Optics Measurements of Rock Deformation and Failure in Triaxial Tests. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 127(8). https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JB023997