Description of new dry granular materials of variable cohesion and friction coefficient: Implications for laboratory modeling of the brittle crust

• We measure the brittle properties of mixtures of silica powder and glass microspheres.
• The cohesions and friction coefficients linearly correlate with mixture content.
• Controlling mixture content yields controlled brittle properties of analog materials.
• Test experiments show prominent effects of brittle layering.
• Brittle properties and brittle layering become experimental variables.

Cohesion and friction coefficient are fundamental parameters for scaling brittle deformation in laboratory models of geological processes. However, they are commonly not experimental variable, whereas (1) rocks range from cohesion-less to strongly cohesive and from low friction to high friction and (2) strata exhibit substantial cohesion and friction contrasts. This brittle paradox implies that the effects of brittle properties on processes involving brittle deformation cannot be tested in laboratory models. Solving this paradox requires the use of dry granular materials of tunable and controllable brittle properties. In this paper, we describe dry mixtures of fine-grained cohesive, high friction silica powder (SP) and low-cohesion, low friction glass microspheres (GM) that fulfill this requirement. We systematically estimated the cohesions and friction coefficients of mixtures of variable proportions using two independent methods: (1) a classic Hubbert-type shear box to determine the extrapolated cohesion (C) and friction coefficient (μ), and (2) direct measurements of the tensile strength (T0) and the height (H) of open fractures to calculate the true cohesion (C0). The measured values of cohesion increase from 100 Pa for pure GM to 600 Pa for pure SP, with a sub-linear trend of the cohesion with the mixture GM content. The two independent cohesion measurement methods, from shear tests and tension/extensional tests, yield very similar results of extrapolated cohesion (C) and show that both are robust and can be used independently. The measured values of friction coefficients increase from 0.5 for pure GM to 1.05 for pure SP. The use of these granular material mixtures now allows testing (1) the effects of cohesion and friction coefficient in homogeneous laboratory models and (2) testing the effect of brittle layering on brittle deformation, as demonstrated by preliminary experiments. Therefore, the brittle properties become, at last, experimental variables.