Fig. 2: Experimental soft Earth source materials and steady-shear rheology.
From: Origins of complexity in the rheology of Soft Earth suspensions
a Parallel-plate rheology setup; the arrow indicates shear direction. b Particle size distributions for kaolin clay and silica sand particles. c Scanning electron microscopy images of kaolin clay particles (left) and silica sand (right) particles. Insets are zoomed-in images for each case; note the stacked clay sheets for kaolin. d Steady-shear flow curves (shear stress-shear rate) of pure clay suspensions (ξ = 1) and e sand-rich suspensions (ξ = 0.2). Respective volume fractions (ϕ) are indicated by different shape values on the side of the plots (diamonds, ϕ = 0.10; inverted triangle with right-half black, ϕ = 0.15; inverted triangles, ϕ = 0.20; triangles, ϕ = 0.30; circle with left-half black, ϕ = 0.35; circles, ϕ = 0.40; squares, ϕ = 0.50; squares with top-half black, ϕ = 0.55). f Dimensionless flow curves for the data shown in (d) and (e); note the similarity of the sand-rich and pure clay suspensions to California Coast Range and French Alps data, respectively (Fig. 1b). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
