9614065 Scholz This grant provides $130,000 as partial support of the costs of upgrading Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's rock mechanics laboratory and partial salary support for a laboratory technician. Specifically, these funds will be used to purchase equipment necessary to upgrade their current triaxial press for high temperature duty, including a new gas medium servo controlled confining pressure system and construction of a fluid separator system so that hot fluids are kept independently contained from cold fluids and at constant temperature. This system will be used for short term studies (4 days) of rock deformation under hydrothermal conditions. For longer term (several month) deformation experiments, five inexpensive triaxial presses systems will be built that are relatively insensitive to power outages and will be used for studies of chemical/mechanical induced pressure solution. This equipment will allow the PI to continue cutting edge research on the impact of solution transport deformation on fault zone rheology and to document the effects of diagenetic precipitation and dissolution in the presence of reactive fluids under deviatoric stress on permeability in sedimentary and fractured igneous and metamorphic rocks. ***
