Rheological tests of viscous material mixtures used as lithosphere analogues

This dataset contains rheological and density measurements of viscous material mixtures used to simulate the lithosphere in analogue modeling of tectonic processes. Simulating lithospheric deformation occurring in nature over geological time scales requires appropriately scaled materials for the laboratory experiments. Here, we characterize viscous materials that can exhibit Newtonian and/or non-Newtonian behavior depending on the applied strain rate. We conducted rotational tests in controlled shear rate mode (i.e., shear rate was increased while keeping the temperature constant) and temperature ramp tests (i.e., temperature was varied while keeping temperature constant) on eight different materials, including pure Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), pure plastiline (Hartum Color Plaxtin Soft), and mixtures of these materials with fillers (iron powder and/or silicone oil).

This publication results from work conducted under the transnational access/national open access action at the Laboratory of Experimental Tectonics of the University Roma Tre supported by WP3 ILGE - MEET project, PNRR - EU Next Generation Europe program, MUR grant number D53C22001400005.