A parametric method to model 3D displacements around faults with volumetric vector fields

Abstract

International audienceThis paper presents a 3D parametric fault representation for modeling the displacement field associated with faults in accordance with their geometry. The displacements are modeled in a canonical fault space where the near-field displacement is defined by a small set of parameters consisting of the maximum displacement amplitude and the profiles of attenuation in the surrounding space. The particular geometry and the orientation of the slip of each fault are then taken into account by mapping the actual fault onto its canonical representation. This mapping is obtained with the help of a curvilinear frame aligned both on the fault surface and slip direction. This formulation helps us to include more geological concepts in quantitative subsurface models during 3D structural modeling tasks. Its applicability is demonstrated in the framework of forward modeling and stochastic sequential fault simulations, and the results of our model are compared to observations of natural objects described in the literature

A parametric fault displacement model to introduce kinematic control into modeling faults from sparse data

“…Our three-dimensional fault operator extends the work of Laurent et al (2013) and Georgsen et al (2012). It deforms a first approximated continuous horizon geometry along faultparallel lines in the dip directionusing a 3D discontinuous displacement field.…”

“…Several authors have also integrated fault kinematics, i.e., the distribution of the slip on and close to the fault surface, directly into the modeling process. In these approaches, the slip distribution is expressed by a numerical fault operator (Munthe et al, 1994;Hollund et al, 2002;Holden et al, 2003;Georgsen et al, 2012;Laurent et al, 2013).…”

“…Such kinematic fault operators have demonstrated their applicability to the modeling of synthetic (Munthe et al, 1994;Georgsen et al, 2012;Laurent et al, 2013) and real (Hollund et al, 2002;Holden et al, 2003) faulted structures. Our three-dimensional fault operator extends the work of Laurent et al (2013) and Georgsen et al (2012).…”

“…The near-field displacement represents the discontinuous displacement in the volume immediately surrounding the fault surface. The far-field displacement is the regional contribution of the fault to the bulk displacement (Laurent et al, 2013). Geologists who predict hydrocarbon production focus on near-fault geometries because most of fault-seal related algorithms rely on displacements to model fault transmissivities (e.g., Jolley et al, 2007;Manzocchi et al, 2010).…”

“…In the direction orthogonal to the fault surface, flanking structures (due for instance to fault drag or fault-related folding) have been observed (Chapman and Meneilly, 1990;Grasemann et al, 2005;Coelho et al, 2005;Mulchrone, 2007;Spahić et al, 2013;Mukherjee, 2014). These orthogonal structures coupled with the observations close to the fault surface have been used to propose threedimensional parameterizations of the fault-related displacement (Georgsen et al, 2012;Laurent et al, 2013).…”