Shock metamorphism of some rock-forming minerals

The shock metamorphism of schist consisting of garnet, biotite, quartz, and plagioclase is studied under shock wave loading of a sample in steel recovery ampoules of plane geometry. A maximum shock pressure was reached during several circulations of waves in the sample (stepwise shock compression) and varied within the range 19–52 GPa. The recovered samples were examined by the methods of scanning electron microscopy and microprobe and X-ray phase analysis. The results were compared with natural impactites and with shock-induced alterations in minerals loaded by a spherical convergent wave. It is established that, given a plane geometry of loading (stepwise shock compression), solid-state transformations at the lattice level (migration of chemical elements and formation of shock thermal aggregates) are not observed in all of the studied minerals, in contrast to natural impact processes and spherical geometry experiments. Under the conditions of our experiments, minerals melt at higher pressures than in the case of natural impact processes and spherical geometry experiments. However, for each mineral studied, the mechanical strain patterns at close shock pressures are, on the whole, the same for all of the aforementioned three variants of shock wave loading.