Journal article
Toward the Understanding of Stress-Induced Mineral Dissolution via Molecular Scale Simulations
Yubing Ouyang, Shujian Chen, Weiqiang Chen, Lihai Zhang, Stephan Matthai, Wenhui Duan
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C | AMER CHEMICAL SOC | Published : 2020
Abstract
Stress-induced mineral dissolution at contacts is a critical geophysical process in a broad spectrum of phenomena such as earthquake slip weakening, petroleum migration, and rock deformation. However, there is limited understanding of how this geophysical process originates from the grain-to-grain contacts on a nanoscale. In this study, we simulated the contact process of two quartz asperities in water and present a specially designed molecular dynamics (MD)-based scheme to quantify the dissolution tendency at contacts. Our results suggest that a water layer between the two asperities persists even when the quartz crystals are highly deformed. The MD simulation allowed us to evaluate the the..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the financial support of the Australian Research Council to conduct this research.