Low Temperature Plasticity of Olivine Determined by Nano-indentation

Abstract:

Earth’s upper mantle is thought to deform mainly by dislocation creep, during which strain-rate and stress are related by a simple power law equation. However at much higher stresses there is a break-down in the power law relationship and strain-rate depends exponentially on stress. This phenomenon, known as low temperature plasticity, may be important in the shallow ductile or semi-brittle regions of the lithosphere, at the tips of cracks, or during high-stress laboratory experiments. Several studies have attempted to constrain the low-temperature rheology of olivine using micro-indentation or high pressure experiments. In this study we provide the first measurements of olivine rheology at low temperature using instrumented nano-indention. Although nano-indentation has been widely used in the materials sciences, its application in the Earth sciences has been very limited. Nano-indentation methods provide rheological measurements that are significantly more precise than other mechanical tests at high pressure and temperature. Moreover, experiments are rapid and largely non-destructive, so many tests can be conducted in a short amount of time. In this study, olivine single crystal and polycrystalline samples were tested using a Hysitron TI950 TriboIndenter. Temperature was varied using a cooling/heating stage from 0-175°C. Experiments were conducted under quasi-static and constant strain-rate conditions. Indentation hardness measurements were converted to uniaxial rheological properties to facilitate direct comparison with previous studies. Yield strengths for olivine range from 4.19 GPa at 175°C to 4.60 GPa at 0°C. Using various models for obstacles to dislocation motion, data are extrapolated to 0 Kelvin to extract a Peierls stress for olivine (5.32-6.45 GPa), which is at the lower end of the range of values determined in previous studies. This study demonstrates the efficacy of the nano-indentation method for the study of mineral rheology, and opens a promising line of micromechanical research in the Earth sciences.