Technique for studying in high resolution poromechanical deformation of a rocklike medium.

Abstract

Pressurized fluid injection into underground rocks occurs in applications like carbon sequestration, hydraulic fracturing, and wastewater disposal and may lead to human-induced earthquakes and surface uplift. The fluid injection raises the pore pressure within the porous rocks, while deforming them, yet this coupling is rarely captured by experiments. Moreover, experimental studies of rocks are usually limited to postmortem inspection and cannot capture the complete deformation process in time and space. In this Letter we will present a unique experimental system that can capture the spatial distribution of poromechanical effects in real time by using an artificial rocklike transparent medium mimicking the deformation of sandstone. We will demonstrate the system abilities through a fluid injection experiment, showing the nonuniform poroelastic expansion of the medium and the corresponding poroelastic model that captures completely the results without any fitting parameters. Moreover, our results demonstrate and validate the underlying assumptions of the poroelastic theory for fluid injection in rocklike materials, which are relevant for understanding human-induced earthquakes and injection induced surface uplift.