The crustal stress field of Germany: a refined prediction

Abstract

Information about the absolute stress state in the upper crust plays a crucial role in the planning and execution of, e.g., directional drilling, stimulation and exploitation of geothermal and hydrocarbon reservoirs. Since many of these applications are related to sediments, we present a refined geomechanical–numerical model for Germany with focus on sedimentary basins, able to predict the complete 3D stress tensor. The lateral resolution of the model is 2.5 km, the vertical resolution about 250 m. Our model contains 22 units with focus on the sedimentary layers parameterized with individual rock properties. The model results show an overall good fit with magnitude data of the minimum (S_hmin) and maximum horizontal stress (S_Hmax) that are used for the model calibration. The mean of the absolute stress differences between these calibration data and the model results is 4.6 MPa for S_hmin and 6.4 MPa for S_Hmax. In addition, our predicted stress field shows good agreement to several supplementary in-situ data from the North German Basin, the Upper Rhine Graben and the Molasse Basin.