The key word of my research is 'STRESS', an invisible driving force that brings about a wide variety of geological/geophysical events, including deformation and failure of rocks, faulting, earthquake, and movement of crustal plates. The stress field is also an important parameter needed to analyze a variety of geological engineering problems such as wellbore stability, excavation, slope stability, foundation, and so on.
The major approaches I pursue are
- to simulate geomechanical phenomena under controlled stress conditions in the laboratory, and
- to observe geological phenomena caused by stress in the field or boreholes.
All these efforts are to reveal rock response (deformation, failure, frictional sliding along discontinuities, etc.) to the stress, which depends on rock properties and rheology.
My current and recent research projects can be summarized as:
- Characterization of in situ stress tensors in different places and in different geologic settings in Korea, and other regions such as the Nankai accretionary prism, Japan
- Geomechanics and engineering aspects of drilling and borehole stability for different purposes, such as CO2 sequestration, active fault monitoring (strainmeter), and geothermal energy
- Laboratory experiments for various types of rocks and cements to investigate their physical/mechanical properties, failure behavior, and rheology