Abstract

We quantitatively investigated the flow laws of wet quartzite in steady-state dislocation creep regimes by considering both the dependence of the activation enthalpy on pressure and dependence of the stress exponent on slip systems. From a critically-selected set of creep experiments of wet quartzite with microstructures and c-axis fabrics suggesting steady-state dislocation creeps, we obtained two endmember flow laws corresponding respectively to dominant prism slip and dominant basal slip systems. To characterize the dislocation creep of wet quartzite by a continuous combination of prism and basal slips commonly observed in nature and experiments, we developed a self-consistent micromechanics-based homogenization approach. Our results reconciled the large discrepancies in flow law parameters for wet quartzite determined from different creep experiments and are broadly consistent with microstructures and c-axis fabrics from nature and experiments as well as theoretical considerations.