Towards the application of Stokes flow equations to structural restoration simulations

Melchior Schuh-Senlis and Cedric Thieulot and Paul Cupillard and Guillaume Caumon. ( 2020 )
in: Solid Earth, 11:5 (1909-1930)

Abstract

Structural restoration is commonly used to assess the deformation of geological structures and to reconstruct past basin geometries. For this, geomechanical restoration considers faults as frictionless contact surfaces. To bring more physical behavior and better handle large deformations, we build on a reverse-time Stokes-based method, previously applied to restore salt structures with negative time step advection. We test the applicability of the method to structures including sediments of variable viscosity, faults and nonflat topography. We present a simulation code that uses a combination of arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian methods and particle-in-cell methods, and is coupled with adaptive mesh refinement. It is used to apply the reverse-time Stokes-based method on simple two-dimensional geological cross-sections and shows that reasonable restored geometries can be obtained.

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BibTeX Reference

@article{schuhsenlis:hal-03031296,
 abstract = {Structural restoration is commonly used to assess the deformation of geological structures and to reconstruct past basin geometries. For this, geomechanical restoration considers faults as frictionless contact surfaces. To bring more physical behavior and better handle large deformations, we build on a reverse-time Stokes-based method, previously applied to restore salt structures with negative time step advection. We test the applicability of the method to structures including sediments of variable viscosity, faults and nonflat topography. We present a simulation code that uses a combination of arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian methods and particle-in-cell methods, and is coupled with adaptive mesh refinement. It is used to apply the reverse-time Stokes-based method on simple two-dimensional geological cross-sections and shows that reasonable restored geometries can be obtained.},
 author = {Schuh-Senlis, Melchior and Thieulot, Cedric and Cupillard, Paul and Caumon, Guillaume},
 doi = {10.5194/se-11-1909-2020},
 hal_id = {hal-03031296},
 hal_version = {v1},
 journal = {{Solid Earth}},
 number = {5},
 pages = {1909-1930},
 pdf = {https://hal.science/hal-03031296/file/Schuh-Senlis_SE2020.pdf},
 publisher = {{European Geosciences Union}},
 title = {{Towards the application of Stokes flow equations to structural restoration simulations}},
 url = {https://hal.science/hal-03031296},
 volume = {11},
 year = {2020}
}