ACQUISITION OF A TRIBOLOGICAL FACILITY FOR THE ANALYSES OF FRICTION, WEAR, AND LUBRICATION OF GEO-SYSTEMS

该奖项将提供资金，用于建立一个致力于地质摩擦学的实验设施，该设施将专注于地质系统的摩擦、磨损和润滑，与工程摩擦学平行。该设施将包括一个由多个集成工具组成的摩擦学系统，这些工具将按照工程标准进行商业建造。通过这个项目，将建立一个新的机构，GeoTrib，来研究从断层到冰川底部的地质系统中摩擦、磨损和润滑的基本原理。该设施将允许对地震物理、断层稳定性和冰川运动进行多尺度和多条件分析，并将影响地震灾害和气候变化的社会经济问题。此外，该设施将使用工程方法和标准，从而有助于缩小摩擦磨损地球科学社区与同等规模的大型工程社区之间的差距。GeoTrib将是一个开放的设施，对感兴趣的研究人员来说，由于其多功能的模块化设计，他们可以在当地团队的支持下进行实验工作。直到最近，摩擦学技术还没有广泛应用于地质问题。该设施将利用工程摩擦学方法和标准对现有地球物理系统难以进行的基本地壳和地幔力学问题进行实验研究。GeoTrib将用于分析断层过程、地震物理、冰川流动、滑坡蠕变、泥石流、河床侵蚀、火山爆发和熔岩流。潜在的研究项目包括：(1)样品尺度对粗糙度、摩擦磨损的影响；(2)含水、含水饱和度和温度（-25℃~ 1000℃）对断裂带塑性和愈合率的影响；(3)高温下的动摩擦与流固相互作用；(4)双材料断层的静、动强度；(5)断层硬度随温度、速度和位移的变化规律；(6)在温度和有水的地壳条件下测试理论摩擦/磨损/润滑模型；(7)在纳米尺度上研究具有热依赖机制的脆性-韧性转变，例如位错爬升、晶界滑动；(8)冰川基地和冰卫星冰摩擦和岩石磨损的基本原理。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award will provide funding to build an experimental facility dedicated to Geotribology that will focus on the friction, wear and lubrication of geo-systems, with a parallel equivalency to engineering tribology. The facility will include a tribological system of multiple integrated tools that are commercially built by engineering standards. Via this project, a new facility, GeoTrib, will be created to study the fundamentals of friction, wear, and lubrication in geological systems, from faults to the base of glaciers. The facility will allow multi-scale and multi-condition analyses of earthquake physics, fault stability, and glacial motion and will impact socio-economic issues of seismic hazard and climate change. Further, the facility will use engineering methods and standards and thus will contribute to narrowing the gap between the geoscience community of friction and wear, and the equivalent, large engineering community. GeoTrib will be an open facility for interested researchers who could conduct their experimental work with minimal support of the local team thanks to its versatile, modular design. Until recently, tribological techniques have not been widely applied to geological problems. The facility will utilize engineering tribological methodologies and standards for experimental studies of fundamental crustal and mantle mechanical problems that are too difficult to conduct with existing geophysics systems. GeoTrib will be used for analyses of faulting processes, earthquake physics, glacier flow, landslide creep, debris flow, stream-bed erosion, volcanic eruptions and lava flows. Potential research projects include: (1) the effects of sample scale on roughness, friction and wear; (2) the effects of water presence, water saturation, and temperature (-25 degrees C to 1,000 degrees C) on plasticity and healing rates of faults zones; (3) the dynamic friction and fluid-solid interactions at elevated temperature; (4) static and dynamic strength of bi-material faults; (5) the evolution of fault hardness with temperature, velocity, and displacement; (6) testing theoretical friction/wear/lubrication models at crustal conditions of temperature and water presence; (7) investigating brittle-ductile transition with thermally-dependent mechanisms, e.g., dislocation climb, grain-boundary-sliding, at the nanoscale; and (8) the fundamentals of ice friction and rock wear at glacier base and icy satellites.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.