Abstract A quantitative assessment of how faults control the migration of geofluids is critical in many areas of geosciences. We integrated geological fieldwork, quantitative analysis of the fractures distribution and numerical modeling to build a geometrical representation of a fault zone and to characterize its hydraulic properties. Our target is a fault located in the Majella Mountain (Italy). We collected 21 scan lines across the fault profile in order to characterize its architecture. The numerical modeling of the fracture network of the damage zones and their hydraulic parameters was performed using both commercial (Move®) and open source software (dfnWorks and PFLOTRAN). Move® was used to build a representative model of the fault zone using fracture spacing as a proxy, and to model the hydraulic parameters of the different fault domains. dfnWorks and PFLOTRAN were employed to infer the hydraulic parameters of the damage zones of the fault and then upscale these properties to an equivalent continuum domain, suitable for fluid flow simulations through the whole fault zone. Our findings show how even in a relatively small area it is possible to describe changes in terms of hydraulic properties of a fault zone and to build models capable to represent these variations.

中文翻译：

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从裂缝分布看断层带的水力特征

摘要 断层如何控制地质流体迁移的定量评估在地球科学的许多领域至关重要。我们整合了地质野外工作、裂缝分布的定量分析和数值建模，以构建断层带的几何表示并表征其水力特性。我们的目标是位于马耶拉山（意大利）的断层。我们在故障剖面上收集了 21 条扫描线，以表征其架构。使用商业软件 (Move®) 和开源软件 (dfnWorks 和 PFLOTRAN) 对损坏区域的裂缝网络及其水力参数进行数值建模。Move® 被用来构建断层带的代表性模型，使用裂缝间距作为代理，并对不同断层域的水力参数进行建模。dfnWorks 和 PFLOTRAN 被用来推断断层损伤区的水力参数，然后将这些属性放大到等效的连续域，适用于整个断层带的流体流动模拟。我们的研究结果表明，即使在相对较小的区域内，也可以根据断层带的水力特性来描述变化，并构建能够表示这些变化的模型。