Deep pulverization along active faults ?
Abstract
Pulverization is a intensive damage observed along some active faults. Rarely found in the field, it has been associated with dynamic damage produced by large earthquakes. Pulverization has been so far only described at the ground surface, consistent with the high frequency tensile loading expected for earthquake occurring along bimaterial faults. However, we discuss here a series of hints suggesting that pulverization is expected also several hundred of meters deep. In the deep well drilled within Nojima fault after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, thin sections reveal non localized damage, with microfractured pervading a sample, but with little shear disturbing the initial microstructure. In the SAFOD borehole drilled near Parkfield, Wiersberg and Erzinger (2008) made gas monitoring while drilling found large amount of H2 gas in the sandstone west to the fault. They attribute this high H2 concentration to mechanochemical origin, in accordance with some example of diffuse microfracturing found in thin sections from cores of SAFOD phase 3 and from geophysical data from logs. High strain rate experiments in both dry (Yuan et al, 2011) and wet samples (Forquin et al, 2010) show that even under confining pressures of several tens of megapascals, diffuse damage similar to pulverization is possible. This could explain the occurrence of pulverization at depth.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMMR13A2265D
- Keywords:
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- 3900 MINERAL PHYSICS;
- 7209 SEISMOLOGY Earthquake dynamics;
- 8031 STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY Rheology: crust and lithosphere;
- 8010 STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY Fractures and faults