Most studies of thermally induced cracking in rocks have focused on the generation of cracks formed during heating and thermal expansion. Both the nature and the mechanism of crack formation during cooling are hypothesized to be different from those formed during heating. We present in situ acoustic emission data recorded as a proxy for crack damage evolution in a series of heating and cooling experiments on samples of basalt and dacite. Results show that both the rate and the energy of acoustic emission are consistently much higher during cooling than during heating. Seismic velocity comparisons and crack morphology analysis of our heated and cooled samples support the contemporaneous acoustic emission data and also indicate that thermal cracking is largely isotropic. These new data are important for assessing the contribution of cooling‐induced damage within volcanic structures and layers such as dikes, sills, and lava flows.

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How much magma needs to be added to a shallow magma chamber to cause rupture, dyke injection, and a potential eruption? Models that yield reliable answers to this question are needed in order to facilitate eruption forecasting. Development of a long-lived shallow magma chamber requires periodic influx of magmas from a parental body at depth. This redistribution process does not necessarily cause an eruption but produces a net volume change that can be measured geodetically by inversion techniques. Using continuum-mechanics and fracture-mechanics principles, we calculate the amount of magma contained at shallow depth beneath Santorini volcano, Greece. We demonstrate through structural analysis of dykes exposed within the Santorini caldera, previously published data on the volume of recent eruptions, and geodetic measurements of the 2011–2012 unrest period, that the measured 0.02% increase in volume of Santorini’s shallow magma chamber was associated with magmatic excess pressure increase of around 1.1 MPa. This excess pressure was high enough to bring the chamber roof close to rupture and dyke injection. For volcanoes with known typical extrusion and intrusion (dyke) volumes, the new methodology presented here makes it possible to forecast the conditions for magma-chamber failure and dyke injection at any geodetically well-monitored volcano.

We present a comparative study of crack damage evolution in dry sandstone under both conventional (σ1 > σ2 = σ3), and true triaxial (σ1 > σ2 > σ3) stress conditions using results from measurements made on cubic samples deformed in three orthogonal directions with independently controlled stress paths. To characterize crack damage, we measured the changes in ultrasonic compressional and shear wave velocities in the three principal directions, together with the bulk acoustic emission (AE) output contemporaneously with stress and strain. We use acoustic wave velocities to model comparative crack densities and orientations. In essence, we create two end‐member crack distributions; one displaying cylindrical transverse isotropy (conventional triaxial) and the other planar transverse isotropy (true triaxial). Under the stress conditions in our experiments we observed an approximately fivefold decrease in the number of AE events between the conventional and true triaxial cases. When taken together, the AE data, the velocities, and the crack density data indicate that the intermediate principal stress suppresses the total number of cracks and restricts their growth to orientations subnormal to the minimum principal stress. However, the size of individual cracks remains essentially constant, controlled by the material grain size. Crack damage is only generated when the differential stress exceeds some threshold value. Cyclic loading experiments show that further damage commences only when that previous maximum differential stress is exceeded, regardless of the mean stress, whether this is achieved by increasing the maximum principal stress or by decreasing the minimum principal stress.