Research Projects

Injection induced seismicity in deepgeological formation may cause fluid overpressure. The excess fluid pore pressure bringsthe reservoir close to failure conditions, likely to lead to the formation of secondaryfractures. The fracture formations during fluid injection and post-injection seismicity areextremely important and the mechanics is not completely understood due to theinvolvement of natural and external factors. However, the fracture formation andinteraction with native reservoir facture/faults may also favor earthquakes due to slidingof the fracture and the modification of stress fields. The objective of this study is tounderstand mechanisms of fracture initiation/formation, propagation and inducedseismicity. To understand these processes, the mechanical behavior of reservoir rock atdifferent stress states is extremely important. The aim of this project is to performlaboratory based experiments followed by development of the validated numerical modelswhich can accurately predict the long term behavior of the deep sub-surface strata forvarious applications. The following key objectives are formulated: Determine the rock-response at native deep sub-surface conditions Identify the evolution of weak zones in deep rock samples with loading andunloading Investigate relationship between fracture formation and stress fields at varying rockstrata conditions. Investigate the mechanics triggering the seismicity in deep underlying reservoir. Evolution of rock response under fluid flow states for deeper reservoirs.The above objectives will be achieved through various experimental and numericaltechniques available at the institutes