Scattering amplitude of a single fracture under uniaxial stress

Remotely sensing the properties of fractures has applications ranging from exploration geophysics to hazard monitoring. Newly-developed capabilities to measure the in-plane component of dense laser-based ultrasound wave fields allow us to test the applicability of a linear slip model to describe fracture properties. In particular, we estimate the size, and the normal and tangential compliance of a fracture from the measured scattering amplitudes of Pand Swaves in the laboratory. Finally, we show that the normal compliance decreases linearly with increasing uniaxial static stress in the plane of the fracture, but that our measurements of the SV scattered field do not show significant changes in the tangential compliance.