Well, hello today's lecture is going to be on chapter one The Tectonic Stress

Field.
Some of the things that we discuss you will
have already seen in the first lecture.
But there'll be some new ideas and concepts
that will have a chance to develop more fully.
The lecture is going to be in three sections.
The first section to discuss basic definitions of stress,
to go through Anderson's stress classification system in some more detail.
And to show kind of a place where all of our normal rules break down, and that
is the stress field near salt domes and the
reasons for this will be clear in a moment.
We'll talk about stress magnitudes in a little bit, the information
you need to do homework one on calculating the vertical stress.
And then we'll revisit some of the questions and
issues surrounding regional stress fields that were introduced yesterday.
And talk about local stress perturbations, especially near faults.
Now mathematically, you know, we can think of stress
in its simplest terms, that is force per unit area.
So we use pounds of force per square inch.
We use megapascals.
A pascal is a newton per square meter.
And a megapascal is 145 psi.
So those are the units we're going to be talking about.
Compression is always positive, in this course, the convention we'll use.
And mathematically, stress is defined as a second-rank tensor, with nine
components.
And those nine components, nine magnitudes, describe
the stress acting on different planes.
And here we're using a Cartesian coordinate system of arbitrary orientation
in the upper in the left side of the diagram.
And those nine components define the direction the force
is acting, and the face that it's acting on.
So for example, we could take the S21 force.
And that traction is acting perpendicular to the two
axis, and it's acting in, in the one direction, okay?
So, we have nine magnitudes, and we have three directions to define
this coordinate system and some coordinate system of interest.
Perhaps a geographic coordinate system, or the coordinate system around a wellbore.
Or if we're interested in fault slip, the coordinate
system would be defined by the orientation of the fault.
That's a pretty cumbersome
operation if that's how we were required to work.
Now, the, because of equilibrium conditions, only six of these
Components are independent, so S12 equals S21 and so on.
So that reduces the problem a little bit.
But there's two really remarkable properties of the
stress field, and the stress field in the earth, that makes describing the stress,
the stress field in a quantitative way much simpler and much more practical.
And that is in every body one can define, a principal coordinate system.
A principal coordinate system is one in which the tractions disappear,
and all we're left with are the stresses acting normal to our three planes.
For example I show a principal coordinate system over here on the right.
In which the only three stresses we have to define are S1,
acting perpendicularly to the plane perpendicular to the one axis.
S2 and S3 and I call this the prime coordinate
system but it is a principal coordinate system,
so our job has gotten a lot easier.
Okay?
Now, the reason this is so convenient is not only
do we need fewer numbers to describe the stress field.
But this is a coordinate system that's particularly good
for describing the state of stress in the Earth.
Why?
Because in the Earth, we have a solid, which is overlain by a fluid.
When we're on land, the fluid is obviously air,
and we're at sea, the fluid is obviously water.
Fluids can support no shear.
And a principal coordinate system is a plane which the shear stresses vanish.
So the surface of the Earth, or the bottom
of the sea, is by definition a principal plane.
And the principal stresses then are acting
perpendicular and parallel to that surface.
Now okay, so that's very nice.
Now, all we have to do, is describe the stress with three
numbers, the two horizontal stresses and the vertical stress, and one orientation.
And we typically describe the orientation of
the maximum horizontal stress with respect to north.
So, instead of going from six
magnitudes, and three angles, we go
to three magnitudes and one angle.
Because we're talking about the Earth.
Now one can argue that, well its clear that the Earth's surface is a
principal plane, but how do we know that that assumption is true at depth.
And I'm going to come back to that that issue in just in just a moment.
Now there's another really important attribute of the stress
field that also makes our job a lot easier.
And that is, if you know the stress in one
coordinate system you can mathematically compute the state of stress
in any other coordinate system, if you simply
know the angles that define one coordinate system with
respect to another, and we call those angles the
direction cosines and that's this matrix, this matrix A.
So, for example, if you had known the stress field perfectly here.
And you wanted to compute the stresses in some other coordinate system.
For example, the coordinate system around a well, if
you're interested in the problem of wellbore stability.
The coordinate system defined by the orientation of a fault,
if you want to know whether that fault is going to slip.
If you know the orientation of the
well with respect to the first coordinate system,
or if you know the orientation of the
fault with respect to the first coordinate system.
This coordinate transformation, which requires only
knowledge, of the initial stress state, and
the angles that define, the two coordinate systems with respect to each other.
One can convert from the coordinate system in which you know the
stress, to the coordinate system in which you want to know the stress.
Now because that's a general property.
And we have this other attribute that in the
Earth one principle stress is vertical and two are horizontal.
We're always going to work in this coordinate system to make life
easy, and then we are going
to mathematically transform in this direction.
To calculate the stresses that we want to know in
the coordinate system that the problem we are working on defines.
The wellbore, the fault, etc.
So, it's a really important to keep in mind that, that all we need to
do is define the stress field, in sort of a physically intuitive.
Right, we think about depth, that's the first order,
we think about things in a geographic coordinate system right?
What direction is the force acting with respect to north.
What direction is a wellbore?
Going with respect to north and and the
vertical axis what orientation does a fault have?
What direction does it strike with respect to north?
How much is it dipping?
With respect to the free surface, we get the wonderful
opportunity to always be working in a convenient coordinate system.
And then mathematically, we're going to then
translate that coordinate system that we're comfortable,
physically comfortable working with, to the coordinate
system we need to solve our problem.
And, the software we'll be using in the
course is basically going to do that for you.
You're not going to have to do this mathematically
transformation but, you know, you could if you'd like.
So these two, these two properties, that there's
always a principal coordinate system, remember there's three properties.
There's always a principle coordinate system.
If we know the state of stress in that coordinate system,
we can calculate the state of stress in any other coordinate system.
And in the Earth, it's almost always the case,
that one principle stress is vertical, and two are horizontal.
At least for the regional you know background stress state.
Okay those three properties make our job about talking
about stress much, simpler in, in rigorous quantitative terms.
Yes?
>> You mentioned that you, we only need one angle when we
find the principle stresses.
So is that when we call one principle stress vertical?
>> Yeah.
The question is why is there only one angle?
And the reason there is only one angle is for,
at this moment in time, and through most of the
course, we're going to assume that one principle stress is
vertical and the two other are acting in the horizontal plane.
But in just a few minutes, I'll show you
an example Of how that assumption breaks down, okay?
Just so you're, you know, I want to
point out that which is generally true.
But I don't want to simplify the discussion to
being simplistic and imply that it's always, always, always true.
Okay.
So, I want you to understand the basic principles, but then also
understand that there are exceptions to those
principles that you have to keep in mind.
So, that leads to this cartoon that I showed previously.
In that one, we're describing a making the geomechanical model of the earth,
it's these three principal stresses, which we just for convenience call.
Sv for the overburden, Shmax for the maximum
horizontal stress, and Shmin for the minimum horizontal stress.
At least the stress part of the model
is defined by those three ,numbers.
And the orientation.
Now, 35 years ago, around 1978, Mary Lou Zoback
and I started to make stress maps in the United States.
Mostly in the central and eastern United States and
this is a theory from one of our early papers.
Orginally published in 1980.
And when we did this work, it was very controversial.
And, in fact, many of the experienced people in the field
told us that it was impossible to map the stress state.
Well, you know, when you're a young person
and you're starting on a new research endeavor,
and some old person in the field tells you what you're going to do is impossible.
What greater incentive did we need than that to, to carry on?
And what we had to do is we had to establish criteria.
For looking at the tectonic stress field.
And one of those criteria was to look at depth.
So when we make these maps and when we talk about stress in the
Earth, we're typically not going to talk about stresses in the very near surface.
Why?
Because in the very near surface, all sorts of
processes other than geologic processes can affect the stress field.
For example, if you're a civil engineer, in fact
your problem is much harder than our problem is.
Because civil engineers have to worry about topography.
Right?
Just a little bit of topography can affect the stress
field if you're interested in the stress right at that point.
If you're, working in a rock mass with lots of fractures in it.
If you're right next to a fracture at, you know, you know, in the nearest
surface, that stress field will be highly altered
by that, by the existence of that fracture.
Because, obviously, if it's an open fracture,
no stress can be acting perpendicular to it.
In many cases, the stresses at shallow
depth might be affected by temperature.
And what season it is, what time of the day, there is actually a
thermal pulse that penetrates a few meters in hot areas and hard rock.
All of those things make the problem very, very difficult.
We're not going to worry about that because
we're going to almost always talk about stress
at depths greater than about 100 meters, where a lot of these effects go away.
And, if we're dealing with an area of topography,
we're usually working at depths even below that topography.
So, the effect of the topography averages itself out.
And when we use that depth criterion, our life became a lot simpler.
The other thing we did is we restricted
the kinds of data that we actually considered.
For example, the initial measurements of stress were being
done in mining and civil engineering example and applications.
And they use devices known as strain gauges.
And what they do is they would place the device onto a rock mass.
They would core over that rock mass, separate the rock
mass from the surrounding stress field, and the rock would expand.
Okay.
And that expansion could be mathematically turned into knowledge of the forces.
Well, that's a very reasonable thing to do at the
scale at which it's being done, but, of course, if
you're doing it at the surface, it's a measurement at
the surface, which is prone to all of these other problems.
And if you're doing it down in a mine or a tunnel you're almost
always doing it so close to the mine or the tunnel that the stress field.
Is affected again by these near surface effects, so, we didn't
use those data, or we, in fact used those data, in a very restricted way.
And for the data that we chose to use, which
I have introduced previously, wellbore breakouts, drilling induced fractures,
geologically recent slip on faults, etc.
We established very rigorous criterion for what it would take
to be a reliable indicator of the regional tectonic stress.
And we'll talk about those in chapter nine in some detail.
And therefore the high quality data are shown
and when you look at the high quality data.
What you can see are these regionally
consistent patterns I spoke about previously, regardless of
whether we're sampling in a well at
depths typically between about one and five kilometers.
Or we're sampling in the upper crust with earthquakes,
which are typically, you know, five to fifteen kilometers in depth, okay?
And we see these regional patterns, they're
independent of rock type, they're even independent
largely of provenance, you know,
as you change from one geological terrane to another.
And you can often see remarkably consistent
patterns of stress going through those different terranes.
And finally something else we'll talk about in chapter 9, is that the stresses
we observe are explainable in terms of regional tectonic processes.
When you understand what's going on geologically, suddenly, the
stress that you're measuring starts to make geologic sense.
And in fact in the Central and Eastern United States the main source of
stress happens to be the ridge push
force from the Mid-Atlantic ridge which is responsible.
You know, one of the major forces responsible
for plate motion across the lithosphere.
Across the surface of the Earth.
And of course those principals were then
later expanded on and, discussed globally as,
I mentioned previously so we're
going to come back to the World Stress Map.
We're going to you know, come back to some of these basic issues and principals
about how stress works in the Earth from time to time in the course.
But this is, in fact, a course in application
to reservoirs, so we'll mostly work at a smaller scale.
Okay, so, since I've told you what the basic story is.
One principal stress being vertical and two being horizontal.
Let me show you the exception.
But, before I do there's one historic note that I wanted to make.
And I introduced it before about
the principle stresses being vertical and horizontal.
Okay.
So near the Earth's surface, in the
absence of topography, we perfectly
assume that one principle stress is vertical
and two are horizontal, makes sense.
What happens as we go deeper, and deeper, and
deeper and now we're five kilometers from the Earth's surface.
Is it still reasonable?
Well, your surface is pretty big and five kilometers is pretty small, you know?
Compared to the surface of the Earth, things
are still pretty flat at that depth of interest.
But in fact, experimentally, as we were compiling this
data, we initially had to assume that we could
look at principal stresses that were
horizontal and vertical.
And the only thing we had to defend that is from earthquake focal plane mechanisms.
Now when an earthquake occurs, the radiated seismic energy allows you to
calculate whether it's normal faulting, or strike slip faulting, or reverse
faulting.
And give you a sense of the orientation of the fault, on which the slip
occurred and we're going to be talking about
this in Chapter 5 at, in some detail.
It doesn't give you precise knowledge of stress orientation
and it gives you no knowledge of stress magnitude.
But it gives you a sense of orientation and a sense of relative magnitude.
Okay?
And we could show that by compiling intraplate earthquake data
from various regions of the world where good data was available.
Almost always, it did seem as if one stress
was about vertical, and the other two were about horizontal.
So we weren't far off in most cases but it was not a precise argument.
Later, when we began to look at the failure of
deviated wells, what we were able to show was that
the principles of wellbore failure allow you to say something
about the orientation of stresses, when deep wells are suddenly deviated
from vertical and are either a deviated well or even a horizontal well.
So now as well bore imaging became more commonly available
from the oil and gas industry, deep wells became more available.
Wells drilled at orientations other than purely vertical.
We can use the observations of the wellbore, failures to say, or to
test the question, are the principal stresses
acting in a vertical and horizontal planes?
And the answer in every case that we've tested it, in general, has been yes.
Okay?
So this assumption that we started with, still see,
after 35 years, still seems to be a good assumption.
But it's not going to be true every day.