A new centrifugal hypergravity piston cylinder apparatus.

Abstract

Hypergravity high-temperature and high-pressure experiments are a powerful tool for studying geological processes over long periods. A new centrifugal hypergravity piston cylinder apparatus has been developed for beam centrifuge. The unique design of this centrifugal hypergravity piston cylinder apparatus is that the hydraulic system and the press are relatively independent. A maximum pressure of 31 kbar was reached, based on pressure calibrations using the melting curve of NaCl and the phase transition of quartz to coesite. The temperature distribution within the cell assembly was investigated by two thermocouples over a temperature range of 500-1300 °C. The hypergravity experiments were successfully carried out up to 120 g over the pressure and temperature ranges of 5-30 kbar and 500-1300 °C, respectively. The centrifugal hypergravity piston cylinder technique has been successfully applied to measure the viscosity of silicate melt, and it also can be applied to reproduce the geological evolution of the deep Earth.