Interests: Rock Mechanics, Flow in Porous Media, Earthquake Physics and Computational Mechanics.
Research: I am currently working on injection induced seismicity, firstly I am looking at the micromechanical evolution of pore-pressure and slip phases in fault gouge using a granular mechanics based discrete element model (DEM) coupled with flow in porous media. We are looking at how the slip phases in the fault gouge changes with increase and decrease in far field injection pressure.
Secondly, I am trying to address the problem on why around the world, many induced earthquakes are seen around large distances of an injection site over a short period of time, which can’t be accounted by any crustal scale hydraulic diffusivity. We theorize that permeability evolution with increasing injection and pore pressure acts as a competing mechanism to aid in the occurrence of “faster than diffusion ruptures” which causes these far field earthquakes in short time since injection.
