Laboratory experiments for understanding mechanical properties of fractured granite under supercritical conditions

To extract geothermal energy effectively and safely from magma and/or adjacent hot rock, we need to tackle many issues which require new technology development, such as a technique to control a risk from induced-earthquakes. On a development of induced-earthquake mitigation technology, it is required to understand roles of factors on occurrences of the induced-earthquake (e.g., strength, crack density, and fluid-rock reaction) and their intercorrelations (e.g., Asanuma et al., 2012). Our purpose of this series of experiments is to clarify a relationship between the rock strength and the crack density under supercritical conditions. We conducted triaxial deformation test on intact granite rock strength under high-temperature (250 - 750°C), high-pressure (104 MPa) condition at a constant load velocity (0.1 μm/sec) using a gas-rig at AIST. We used Oshima granite, which has initially <0.2 % of the porosity, 4.29±0.55 km/s in Vp (dry), and 2.49±0.19 km/s in Vs (dry). All experimental products showed the brittle feature having several oblique fracture surfaces, but the amount of stress drop became smaller at higher temperature. Young's modulus increased with decreasing the temperature from 32.3 GPa at 750°C to 57.4 GPa at 250°C. At 400 °C, the stress drop accelerated the deformation with 98 times faster velocity than that at load-point. In contrast, at 650°C and 750°C, the velocity during stress drop kept the same order of the load-point velocity. Therefore, the deformation mechanism may start to be changed from brittle to ductile when the temperature exceeds 650°C. Highly dense cracked granite specimens were formed by a rapid decompression test (RDT) using an autoclave settled at Tohoku University (Hirano et al., 2016JpGU), caused by a reduction of fluid pressure within 1-2 sec from vapor/supercritical state (10 - 48 MPa, 550 °C) to ambient pressure. The specimens after RDT show numerous microcracks on X-ray CT images. The RDT imposed the porosity increasing towards 3.75 % and Vp and Vs decreasing towards 1.37±0.52 km/s and 0.97±0.25 km/s. The Poisson's ratio shows the negative values in dry and 0.5 in wet. In the meeting, we will present results of triaxial deformation test on such cracked granites and show the relationship between strength and crack density under supercritical conditions.