Steam-driven eruptions are explosions that frequently occur in volcanic and geothermal areas. They are powered by the sudden release and expansion of steam and liquid water trapped under high pressure within the pore spaces of host rocks. We have experimentally studied how the strength of rock hosting steam and liquid controls the nature of explosions based on examples from Lake Okaro (New Zealand). Specifically, we used experiments to estimate the relative amounts of energy that goes into breaking rock up, versus that required for ejecting particles upwards and outwards. Here we report the main methodological approach and results of petrophysical properties analyses, decompression experiments and estimation of explosivity of water, respectively.
This dataset is associated with the publication of Hefny, M., et al. (2020) A laboratory approach for the calibration of seismic data in the western part of the Swiss Molasse Basin: the case history of well Humilly-2 (France) in the Geneva area”. It includes data on mineralogical composition and experimental ultrasonic waves velocity measurements. It contains also seismic parameters calculated for the above-mentioned data. The measurements were performed as part of a database collection (SAPHYR) under the umbrella of the Swiss Commission of Geophysics (SGTK) and a project of the Canton of Geneva (GEothermie 2020), implemented by Services Industriels de Genève (SIG) for geothermal energy development (Moscariello 2019).