The practice of injecting fluids into the crust is linked to regional increases in seismicity. Increasing fluid pressure along preexisting faults is believed to enhance seismicity rates by reducing the shear stress required for slip, but the processes that cause faults to slip under conditions of fluid pressurization are poorly constrained. We use experimental rock deformation to investigate the controls of fluid pressurization and pressurization rates on fault slip style. We show that pore fluid pressurization is less effective that mechanical changes in fault normal stress at initiating accelerated slip events. Fluid pressurization enhances the total slip, slip velocity, and shear stress drop of events initiated by mechanical changes in normal stress, and these parameters are correlated with pressurization rate, but not the magnitude of fluid pressure. This result is consistent with field‐scale observations and indicates that processes active at the pore network scale affect induced seismicity.
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