Download NORDIC GEOLOGICAL WINTER MEETING 2016, 13

NORDIC GEOLOGICAL WINTER MEETING 2016, 13-15 January, Helsinki
Understanding brittle structures in the context of underground geological applications
The detection and understanding of the properties and behaviour of brittle structures plays an essential role in many
geological applications such as civil engineering, mining and in the deep geological disposal of high-level nuclear
waste. In crystalline rocks, brittle structures act as the preferential flow paths for fluids, including groundwater and
hydrothermal fluids, the former being of importance to water supply and applications of geothermal heat production
and the latter to the formation of hydrothermal ores. In addition, brittle structures affect both the short-term and
long-term stability of underground excavations through the formation of block-forming discontinuities and acting as
zones having a potential to host future earthquakesHowever, despite of all the extensive work carried out on brittle
structures and the understanding accumulated so far, the structural complexity and the widely variable scales makes
characterization of brittle structures extremely challenging. For these reasons, several question marks still exist for
example on the interplay between fluid flow, mechanical properties and long-term behaviour of brittle structures.
For this session we are seeking contributions from different aspects of research conducted on brittle structures,
covering aspects from the detection, both geological and rock mechanical characterisation to the advanced modelling
of the behaviour of brittle structures. We invite presentations from research focusing mostly (but not restricted to) on
crystalline environments and which have a link to ongoing underground applications, such as mining, bedrock
engineering and the deep geological disposal of high-level nuclear waste. We furthermore encourage submissions
from interdisciplinary research trying to establish links between geology, hydrology, rock mechanics and seismology.