Asymptotic solutions for self-similar fault slip induced by fluid injection at constant rate (2401.13828v2)

Abstract: We examine the circular, self-similar expansion of frictional rupture due to fluid injected at a constant volumetric rate. Fluid injection occurs at a point on the fault and fluid migration occurs within a thin, relatively permeable layer containing and parallel to the fault plane. For the particular case when the Poisson ratio $\nu=0$, self-similarity of the fluid pressure profile implies that fault slip will also evolve in an axisymmetric, self-similar manner, reducing the three-dimensional problem for the spatiotemporal evolution of fault slip to a single self-similar dimension. The rupture radius grows as $\lambda \sqrt{4\alpha_{hy} t}$ , where $t$ is time since the start of injection, $\alpha_{hy}$ is the hydraulic diffusivity of the pore fluid pressure, and $\lambda$ is a prefactor determined by a single parameter, $T$, which depends on the pre-injection stress state and injection conditions. The prefactor has the range $0<\lambda<\infty$, where the lower and upper limits of $\lambda$ correspond to, respectively marginal pressurization of the fault and critically stressed conditions, in which the fault-resolved shear stress is close to the pre-injection fault strength. In both limits of $\lambda$, we derive solutions for the slip by perturbation expansion, to arbitrary order. In the marginally pressurized limit, the perturbation is regular and the series expansion is convergent. For the critically stressed limit, the perturbation is singular, the solution for slip contains a boundary layer and an outer solution, and the series expansion is divergent. In the critically stressed case, we perform a matched asymptotic expansion to provide a composite solution with uniform convergence over the entire rupture. The leading order of these solutions was recently used by S\'aez et al. [2022] to verify three-dimensional boundary-element solutions in the limit $\nu=0$.