Technical development of simple shear deformation experiments using a deformation-DIA apparatus

Technical developments for simple shear deformation experiments at high pressures were made. The newly designed cell assembly can be compressed by deformation-DIA apparatuses with the MA 6-6 system, which consists of six second-stage tungsten carbide anvils (with a truncated edge length of 5 mm) and the anvil guide. Deformation of samples was barely observed during the compression process, showing that the shear strain of the deformed samples can be measured by the rotation of a strain marker. Simple shear deformation experiments on anhydrous and hydrous olivine aggregates were conducted under upper mantle conditions (pressures of 5.2–7.6 GPa and temperatures of 1 473–1 573 K), and sample deformation with a shear strain of γ=0.8−1.2 was successfully achieved at a shear strain rate of 4.0×10−5−7.5×10−5 s−1. The present study extended the pressure range of simple shear deformation experiments in the deformation-DIA apparatus from 3 GPa in an early study to 7.6 GPa at high temperatures.