Frictional Stability and Permeability Enhancement of a Natural Granite Fracture under Monotonic and Cyclic Fluid Injections
Abstract
Cyclic fluid injection is a promising hydraulic stimulation strategy for balancing seismicity control and permeability enhancement in underground formations. However, the mechanisms by which cyclic injection affects fracture permeability and seismic hazard remain unclear. To address this, we simulated the slip behavior of a pre-stressed granitic rough natural fracture under monotonic and cyclic fluid pressurizations using the rate-and-state friction law. Transient permeability was calculated using an aperture model based on displacement and velocity, with constitutive parameters constrained by numerical inversion of experimental data. Our results reveal that monotonic pressurization induces a sharp increase in slip displacement and velocity, enhancing fracture permeability by approximately four times. However, a subsequent significant drop in slip velocity reduces permeability to about three times its initial value. Conversely, cyclic pressurization results in slip displacement and velocity changes approximately 1/10 of those in the monotonic case, leading to a temporally smaller initial permeability increase but a higher long-term permeability (around 5 times the initial value) than in the monotonic case at similar final slip displacements (~0.1 mm). The reduced slip velocity in the cyclic case is primarily due to the lower peak injection pressures (95% of the peak in the monotonic case) and subsequent depressurizations. These results highlight the critical role of slip velocity history in controlling transient fracture permeability and demonstrate the potential of cyclic hydraulic shearing to enhance permeability while reducing seismicity under longer stimulation times, provided that injection parameters are carefully designed.