Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to the session TS2.4/ERE5.8 titled “Deformation of mudrocks and clay bearing faults - from laboratory to microscopic scale”, at EGU 2017.

We would appreciate receiving your submission soon (Deadline for abstract submission is on January 11, 2017).

Do not hesitate to inform your co-workers.

Please view more details below or at: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2017/session/23889

Yours sincerely,

Guillaume Desbois, convener

Ben Laurich, co-convener

Alexandre Dimanov, co-covener

Joyce Schmatz, co-convener

TS2.4/ERE5.8 
Deformation of mudrocks and clay bearing faults - from laboratory to microscopic scale (co-organized)

Convener: Guillaume Desbois

Co-coveners: Ben Laurich, Alexandre Dimanov, Joyce Schmatz

Mudrocks are fine-grained siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. They are highly relevant to our society as they are investigated as tight-gas reservoirs, as fluid-barriers and as repositories for radioactive waste. This makes it crucial to study their response to stress, which can strongly vary: from viscous to brittle behaviour, from self-sealing of fractures to complete loss of integrity.

Mudrocks are complex. Commonly, they consist of a multi-phase, anisotropic fabric with high porosity but low permeability. The high fabric variability between mudrock types leads to a high variability in response to environmental controls. Studying mudrocks is challenging. We aim to gather talented scientists which present their recent work on mudrock deformation and/or on clay-bearing faults. We like to emphasize the interdisciplinary aspects of this topic and welcome contributions from all kinds of disciplines: from pure laboratory analysis to extrapolating long-term physical rock properties, from outcrop to microscopic scale.

Contributions related to the following topics on mudrocks are of special interest for this session:

• Determination of physical rock properties
• Microstructures and their relation to physical rock properties
• Inferring deformation mechanisms
• Development of analytical and laboratory methods
• Porosity analyses
• Fluid-driven processes
• Mineral transformations
• Evolution of microstructures with increasing strain and time
• Natural vs. experimental microstructures
• Establishing of constitutive equations and numerical models