Deep Geothermal Power Plants: Soil-Structure Interaction under Micro-Seismic Events

Owing to the rising environmental concerns towards using non-renewable resources for heat and power production, renewable sources, such as deep geothermal energy, are steadily gaining popularity. It has been observed that the operation of those plants may cause low magnitude (Ml < 2.5) shallow earthquakes in the area surrounding the geothermal facility. In this paper, a systematic framework is proposed to analyse the seismic response of structures under the geothermally induced micro-seismic events based on a one-dimensional soil-structure interaction model. The results includes the comparison of the free-field ground response and the structure response for deep geothermally induced and natural seismic events in the frequency and time domains. The results show that low-rise buildings are more susceptible to damage caused by deep geothermally induced seismic events in comparison to high-rise buildings.