Dissolution and compaction instabilities in geomaterials

Abstract:

Compaction bands play an important role in reservoir engineering and geological storage. Their presence in geological formations may also provide useful information on various geological processes. Several mechanisms can be involved at different scales and may be responsible for compaction band instabilities [1]. Compaction bands can be seen as a particular instability of the governing mathematical system leading to localization of deformation [2-4]. In a saturated porous rock, the progressive mechanical damage of the solid skeleton during compaction, results in the increase of the interface area of the reactants and consequently in the acceleration of the dissolution rate of the solid phase [2,5]. Thus, the solid skeleton is degraded more rapidly (mass removal because of dissolution), the overall mechanical properties of the system diminish (contraction of the elastic domain – chemical softening), deformations increase and the solid skeleton is further damaged (intergranular fractures, debonding, breakage of the porous network etc.). The stability of this positive feedback process is investigated analytically through linear stability analysis by considering the strong chemo-poro-mechanical coupling due to chemical dissolution. The post bifurcation behavior is then studied analytically and numerically revealing the compaction band thickness and periodicity. The effect of various parameters is studied as for instance the influence of the hydraulic diffusivity on the compaction band thickness.

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