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H2020Individual fellowship2020–2022

DAMAGE · seismic off-fault Deformation: A multi-scale iMAGing to constrain Earthquake energy budget

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2020-01-13 → 2022-06-15
EU contribution
€184,708
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

seismic off-fault Deformation: A multi-scale iMAGing to constrain Earthquake energy budget

Earthquakes are ruptures that nucleate, propagate and terminate mostly on pre-existing faults with a sudden and possibly destructive release of elastic strain energy, making them one of the world's deadliest natural hazards. Most of the earthquake energy is dissipated into heat by friction due to localized slip in the core of faults at depth. The remaining energy amount is partly driven to the Earth’s surface by seismic waves, but is also spent in the rupture propagation and the generation of extensive rock deformation in the vicinity of seismic faults. Vast research has been directed in the years to investigate localized shear deformation within the core of faults (i.e. on-fault deformation), whereas much less is known about the physical processes and energy sinks associated to distributed off-fault deformation. The objective of DAMAGE was to quantify off-fault coseismic rock deformation at different scales by combining targeted geological and geophysical surveys with rock deformation experiments. The action specifically focused on carbonates, the rocks that host most of the destructive seismicity affecting Europe. In particular, geological and geophysical surveys were conducted within active extensional fault zones of the central Italian Apennines, one of the regions with the highest seismic hazard worldwide. The interdisciplinary approach of the project enabled me to collect novel information about the distribution and intensity of rock deformation in seismogenic carbonate-hosted fault zones, to determine with unprecedented detail the scale-dependent elastic properties of damaged rocks, and to investigate the conditions of rock damage initiation and accumulation under dynamic stress wave loading, by exploiting state-of-the art synchrotron-based imaging techniques.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Earthquakes are one of the deadliest geo-hazards in the world causing huge societal and economic impact. Destructive earthquakes are generally represented by ruptures which nucleate, grow and terminate along pre-existing faults with catastrophic strain energy release. Seismological observations and theoretical arguments demonstrated that most of earthquake energy is dissipated into heat by friction within the core of faults at depth. The remaining energy amount is the one driven to the Earth surface by seismic waves and associated to the generation of extensive DAMAGE in the vicinity of seismic faults. Vast research was recently performed to investigate on-fault mechanisms during earthquakes whereas much less has been done to constrain the physical processes and energy sinks associated to coseismic off-fault deformation. I propose here to systematically study off-fault coseismic damage in carbonates, which are the rocks where most of the destructive seismicity striking Europe is hosted. The proposed research is innovative since it tackles a scientific topic which was so far overlooked with a multiscale interdisciplinary approach combining: detailed field structural and geophysical characterization of exhumed active fault zones, compressive and tensile dynamic loading tests on carbonate rocks, and microstructural-petrophysical characterization of natural and experimental fault rocks. This integrated strategy will lead to build a wealth of novel datasets to quantify the damage structure and scaling relations of seismogenic fault zones in carbonates. Newly conceived rock deformation experiments will then help to determine the mechanical origin of coseismic damage in carbonates. The research will be conducted at Universitè Grenoble-Alpes with a secondment at University of Manchester. The experience of the supervisors and the equipment at both organizations will guarantee the successful progress of the research and my professional growth as independent researcher.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITE GRENOBLE ALPES · GrenobleCoordinatorFrance

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union