Mechanical properties of quartz sand and gypsum powder (plaster) mixtures: Implications for laboratory model analogues for the Earth's upper crust

Granular materials are a useful analogue for the Earth's crust in laboratory models of deformation. Constraining their mechanical properties is critical for such model's scaling and interpretation. Much information exists about monomineralic granular materials, such as quartz sand, but the mechanical characteristics of bimineralic mixtures, such as commonly-used quartz sand mixed with gypsum powder (i.e. plaster), are largely unconstrained. We...