ALBERT

Description: In-situ acoustic emission (AE) monitoring is carried out in mines, tunnels and underground laboratories in the context of structural health monitoring, in decameter-scale research projects investigating the physics of earthquake nucleation and propagation and in research projects looking into the seismo-hydro-mechanical response of the rock mass in the context of hydraulic stimulations or nuclear waste storage. In addition surface applications e.g. monitoring rock faces of large construction sites, rock fall areas and rock slopes are documented in the literature. In geomechanical investigations in-situ AE monitoring provides information regarding the stability of underground cavities, the state of stress and the integrity of the rock mass. The analysis of AE events recorded in-situ allows to bridge the observational gap between the studies of faulting processes in laboratory and studies of larger natural and induced earthquakes. This chapter provides an overview of various projects involving in-situ AE monitoring underground with a focus on recent achievements in the field. In-situ AE monitoring networks are able to record AE activity from distances up to 200 m, but the monitoring limits depend strongly on the extension of the network, geological and tectonic conditions. Very small seismic events with source sizes on approximately decimeter to millimeter scale are detected. In conclusion in-situ AE monitoring is a useful tool to observe instabilities in rock long before any damage becomes directly visible and is indispensable in high-resolution observations of rock volume deformation in decameter in-situ rock experiments.

Description: In the framework of the STIMTEC and STIMTEC-X hydraulic stimulation experiments at the Reiche Zeche mine, Freiberg (Germany), we installed acoustic emission (AE) sensors for the recording of picoseismicity both conventionally using pneumatic coupling and experimentally like a hydrophone, i.e. the sensors were placed in the borehole without a further coupling system or cementing. We investigate performance measures of the hydrophone-like acoustic emission (HAE) sensors such as frequency bandwidth, sensitivity, first motion polarity, coupling and placement quality to assess the sensor’s applicability in adaptive monitoring networks. HAE sensors can be paired with hydraulic equipment, especially with the double packer probe used for stimulation at the decametre scale because the monitored frequency content differs from injection-related noise. This offers a unique opportunity to improve the network geometry and consequently the quality of a seismic catalogue. We analyse the sensor characteristics using active ultrasonic transmission measurements from boreholes with different orientations in the rock volume, noise measurements preceding active centre punch hits in the access galleries and passive recordings of induced acoustic emission events. HAE sensors placed in water-filled boreholes show good sensitivity performance even without optimal coupling to the crystalline rock for recording distances up to 17 m. The HAE sensors record the wavefield adequately for first-arrival identification, polarity picking and amplitude characteristics but are less suitable for detecting S-waves. Due to the borehole geometry HAE sensors record waves with incidence angles from the side, resulting in opposite polarity compared to side-view AE sensors as observed in the field and lab. We discuss the advantages of adaptive monitoring networks with HAE sensors being optimally placed for each stimulation interval configuration anew to improve seismic event detection and quality of event hypocentre locations during hydraulic stimulations. We show that we are able to significantly reduce the azimuthal gap, halve the location uncertainties and improve the network coverage for the purpose of focal mechanism estimations.

Description: In 2020 and 2021 the STIMTEC-X hydraulic stimulation experiment was performed at ca.~130 m below surface at the Reiche Zeche underground research laboratory in Freiberg, Saxony/Germany. The project temporally followed the STIMTEC experiment at the same site and aimed at understanding the stress heterogeneity of the anisotropic and metamorphic gneiss rock mass. The STIMTEC-X experiment applied the hydraulic stimulation technique in several boreholes at the mine-scale. Complementary to the stimulations, there were active seismic ultrasonic transmission data acquired before the stimulations. We use a seismic monitoring network consisting of six single-component acoustic emission (AE) sensors (sensitivity 1-60 kHz), six hydrophone-like AE sensors (sensitivity 1-40 kHz) and four to twelve single-component Wilcoxon accelerometers (sensitivity 50 Hz-25 kHz). The AE sensors and remained stationary in sub-horizontal and upwards reaching boreholes, the accelerometers were mostly installed along the tunnel walls with one accelerometer in a shallow borehole in each tunnel, and the hydrophone-like AE sensors were installed in the down-going water filled boreholes, but repositioned for each measurement campaign (Figure 1). This data set of 120 active ultrasonic transmission (UT) measurements is supplementary to Boese et al. (2022, in review), which introduces some of the active measurement campaigns of the STIMTEC-X experiment in detail. The whole data set togetter with the “Ultrasonic transmission measurements from six boreholes from the STIMTEC experiment, Reiche Zeche Mine, Freiberg (Saxony, Germany)” [https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.4.2.2021.002] was used to evaluate performance measures such as sensitivity and frequency bandwith, coupling, placement and polarity of the hydrophone-like AE sensor compared to AE sensors. The active seismic data provided here are from seven boreholes (BH01, BH05, BH06, BH10, BH14, BH18, BH19) as shown in Figure 1. There are nine tables provided as metadata of which seven contain the STIMTEC-X sensor coordinates for each measurement campaign, the event information of all the 120 UT measurements and the UT picks. The UT measurements were recorded with a sampling rate of 1 MHz and results from an automatic stack of 1024 UT pulses generated by the ultrasonic transmitter and recorded by the STIMTEC-X sensors. The UT measurements are saved in binary file format (fsf file format). Fsf-files can be processed with FOCI software: https://www.induced.pl/software/foci. Each fsf file contains 32768 samples, which corresponds to 0.032768 seconds. All UT event files were manual inspected and phase arrivals identified. These are stored in the fsf-file header as well as in the table STIMTECX_UT_picks.csv.

Description: This data set contains measurements of an underground hydraulic fracture experiment at Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in May and June 2015. The experiment tested various injection schemes for rock fracture stimulation and monitored the resulting seismicity. The primary purpose of the experiment is to identify injection schemes that provide rock fracturing while reducing seismicity or at least mitigate larger seismic events. In total, six tests with three different injection schemes were performed in various igneous rock types. Both the injection process and the accompanied seismicity were monitored. For injection monitoring, the water flow and pressure are provided and additional tests for rock permeability. The seismicity was monitored in both triggered and continuous mode during the tests by high-resolution acoustic emission sensors, accelerometers and broadband seismometers. Both waveform data and seismicity catalogs are provided.

Description: In this article, a high-resolution acoustic emission sensor, accelerometer, and broadband seismometer array data set is made available and described in detail from in situ experiments performed at Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in May and June 2015. The main goal of the hydraulic stimulation tests in a horizontal borehole at 410m depth in naturally fractured granitic rock mass is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of generating multi-stage heat exchangers in a controlled way superiorly to former massive stimulations applied in enhanced geothermal projects. A set of six, sub-parallel hydraulic fractures is propagated from an injection borehole drilled parallel to minimum horizontal in situ stress and is monitored by an extensive complementary sensor array implemented in three inclined monitoring boreholes and the nearby tunnel system. Three different fluid injection protocols are tested: constant water injection, progressive cyclic injection, and cyclic injection with a hydraulic hammer operating at 5 Hz frequency to stimulate a crystalline rock volume of size 30m30m30m at depth. We collected geological data from core and borehole logs, fracture inspection data from an impression packer, and acoustic emission hypocenter tracking and tilt data, as well as quantified the permeability enhancement process. The data and interpretation provided through this publication are important steps in both upscaling laboratory tests and downscaling field tests in granitic rock in the framework of enhanced geothermal system research. Data described in this paper can be accessed at GFZ Data Services under https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.2.6.2023.004 (Zang et al., 2023).