Extreme events and predictability of catastrophic failure in composite materials and in the Earth

Despite all attempts to isolate and predict extreme earthquakes, these nearly always occur without obvious warning in real time: fully deterministic earthquake prediction is very much a ‘black swan’. On the other hand engineering-scale samples of rocks and other composite materials often show clear precursors to dynamic failure under controlled conditions in the laboratory, and successful evacuations have occurred before several volcanic eruptions. This may be because extreme earthquakes are not statistically special, being an emergent property of the process of dynamic rupture. Nevertheless, probabilistic forecasting of event rate above a given size, based on the tendency of earthquakes to cluster in space and time, can have significant skill compared to say random failure, even in real-time mode. We address several questions in this debate, using examples from the Earth (earthquakes, volcanoes) and the laboratory, including the following. How can we identify ‘characteristic’ events, i.e. beyond the power law, in model selection (do dragon-kings exist)? How do we discriminate quantitatively between stationary and non-stationary hazard models (is a dragon likely to come soon)? Does the system size (the size of the dragon’s domain) matter? Are there localising signals of imminent catastrophic failure we may not be able to access (is the dragon effectively invisible on approach)? We focus on the effect of sampling effects and statistical uncertainty in the identification of extreme events and their predictability, and highlight the strong influence of scaling in space and time as an outstanding issue to be addressed by quantitative studies, experimentation and models

Effects of CO2 on P-wave attenuation in porous media with micro-cracks: A synthetic modelling study

The presence of CO2 in hydrocarbon reservoirs can cause significant changes in seismic wave properties. In turn these properties can be used to map CO2 saturation in hydrocarbon reservoirs or aquifers — either from natural sources or by injection from the surface. We present the results of a synthetic modelling study of the effects of supercritical CO2 saturation on P-wave attenuation in a medium consisting of four horizontal layers, including a target aquifer. The target aquifer is modelled fully by an effective medium containing pores saturated with brine and/or CO2 and randomly-aligned microcracks at different densities. The other layers are modelled solely by their bulk seismic velocities and densities. We first compute synthetic seismograms for a reference case where the third layer is completely isotropic with no cracks, no pores and no fluid saturation. We then calculate synthetic seismograms for finite crack densities of 0.01, 0.02 and 0.03 at varying degrees of CO2 saturation in the third layer. The results of our analysis indicate that attenuation is sensitive both to CO2 saturation and the crack density. For a given crack density, attenuation increases gradually with decreasing percentage of CO2 saturation and reaches a maximum at around 10% saturation. The induced attenuation increases with crack density and with offset. These observations hold out the potential of using seismic attenuation as an additional diagnostic in the characterisation of rock formations for a variety of applications, including hydrocarbon exploration and production, subsurface storage of CO2 or geothermal energy extractio

The MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey: I. Survey overview and highlights

Please abstract in the article.The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), the National Research Foundation (NRF), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, US National Science Foundation, the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the DSI/NRF, the SARAO HCD programme, the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Innovation.http://www.aanda.orghj2022Physic

Cell scale self-organisation in the OFC model for earthquake dynamics

64.60.av Cracks, sandpiles, avalanches, and earthquakes, 64.60.De Statistical mechanics of model systems, 64.70.qj Dynamics and criticality, 64.60.Cn Order-disorder transformations,

Complementary methods for characterising slick rock Aeolian sandstone

The petrophysical properties of sandstones, such as wettability, porosity, degree of saturation, and absolute and/or relative permeabilities, are all affected by the microstructural properties of the rock. These include: the nature of the constituent minerals and cement, the degree of rock cementation; the degree of sorting or equivalentl