Speaker(s): Melchior Schuh-senlis

Date: Friday 13th December 2019 - 1:00 pm

Location: Room G201, ENSG Bat G, Nancy

Abstract:

As the need for natural ressources arises with human growth, we need more and more to characterize the Earth's subsurface. Geometric models of underground structures, in 2D and 3D, help to do just that. However, their validity can be questionned, as it is not always clear if they assess well the deformation history of the modeled area. Structural restoration has arisen as one method to verify this validity, by unfolding and unfaulting structures. It was first introduced with geometrical assumptions like a geometrical flattening and a conservation of layer length. Later on, in order to add more physical meaning to the restoration process, geomechanical restoration was introduced, computing the internal deformation of the model with the elastic properties of the rock layers. While this helped improve the quality of the restoration, many issues remain, such as the still mainly geometrical ways of dealing with faults and boundary conditions, or the incapacity to deal with salt layers.

This seminar will introduce my PhD work, that aims at introducing a new geomechanical restoration scheme using creeping flow equations to model the deformation of the subsurface through time, at basin scale.