Methane hydrate cement induced anisotropy in granular sediments

Luo, Tingting, Bangalore Narasimha Murthy, Madhusudhan and Song, Yongchen (2021) Methane hydrate cement induced anisotropy in granular sediments. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, [2021JB022609]. (Submitted)

Abstract

Gas hydrate dissociation is one of the factors that is considered to contribute towards initiation of submarine landslides and failure of hydrate reservoir, which may be linked to the reduction in stiffness and associated strength of sediments. Stiffness or wave velocity plays an important role in evaluating the stability of hydrate reservoirs, which is usually affected by the particle characteristics of sediment matrix. This article presents an experimental study to evaluate the loss of hydrate cement effect on stiffness for a range of granular materials with differing particle characteristics. Given similar effective stress and hydrate saturation, the stiffness of hydrate cemented granular soils not only depend on particle size of host sands, but also on size and shape of finer particles within the matrix. The results show that the presence of cemented hydrates induces anisotropy in the sediments, exhibited by increase in the horizontal stiffness, reduction in Poisson's ratio. The magnitude of anisotropy is governed by particle characteristics, where granular soils with lower specific surface and platy fines show greater degree of influence.

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Contributors

Author: Madhusudhan Bangalore Narasimha Murthy

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