Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Fluid pressure plays an important role in the stability of tectonic faults. However, the in situ mechanical response of faults to fluid pressure variations is still poorly known. To address this question, we performed a fluid injection experiment in a fault zone in shales while monitoring fault movements at the injection source and seismic velocity variations from a near-distance (<10 m) monitoring network. We measured and located the P and S wave velocity perturbations in and around the fault using repetitive active sources. We observed that seismic velocity perturbations dramatically increase above 1.5 MPa of injection pressure. This is consistent with an increase of fluid flow associated with an aseismic dilatant shearing of the fault as shown by numerical modeling. We find that seismic velocity changes are sensitive to both fault opening by fluid invasion and effective stress variations and can be an efficient measurement for monitoring fluid-driven aseismic deformations of faults.