In collaboration with the EGI, our research group has developed and completed a suite of experimental geomechanics laboratory tests on over 200 mudstone samples. Brazilians, UCS tests, triaxial compressive strength tests under a variety of confining pressures, and fracture propagation tests with accompanying high speed and infrared photography have been run.

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Results from these tests are being used to examine and compare damage threshold parameters along the pre-failure stress-strain curve, pre-failure behavior (e.g., Young's Modulus, Poisson's Ratio), and novel data analysis is being completed on post-failure stress-strain responses via the development of an "energy released" term. Energy released quantifies the stress-strain-drop after failure and is an indicator of brittle versus ductile failure behavior (Kennedy, 2011).

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These results have been presented at AAPG, 2016 in Calgary, CA and at EGU, 2017 in Vienna, Austria.

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