The evolution of the damage zone with fault growth in sandstone and its multiscale characteristics

Abstract

We document the formation and evolution of the damage zones associated with strike‐slip faults in porous sandstone, through detailed field and statistical studies of faults of increasing slip magnitudes. The faults initiate as sheared joints with discontinuous damage zone located primarily at fault tips and fault surface irregularities. With increasing slip, the damage zone develops by progressive fracture infilling and is organized into two components with different characteristics. The first of these components is the inner damage zone flanking the fault core with a high fracture frequency and a thickness scaling with fault slip. It contributes to the progressive widening of the fault core with increasing deformation. The second of these components is the outer damage zone with a larger and more variable thickness and a lower fracture frequency than the inner zone. The origin and evolution of the inner and outer damage zones are closely related to the history of fault development, as presented in a new conceptual model for damage zone evolution with fault growth. The statistical properties of the fault networks, determined by scan line surveys, evolve with fault growth. This is attributed to the progressive saturation of the fault networks. Well‐developed fault networks have multifractal properties with important consequences in forecasting and characterizing faults from limited data sets. The conceptual model and statistical data presented here may be used as predictive tools to better estimate the geometrical and statistical properties of the damage zones associated with large faults with remotely resolvable slip magnitude in the subsurface.