[1] In order to investigate the processes responsible for the attenuation of seismic shear waves in the Earth's upper mantle, four olivine polycrystals ranging in mean grain size d from 3 to 23 mm have been fabricated, characterized, and mechanically tested in torsion at high temperatures and seismic frequencies. Both the shear modulus, which governs the shear wave speed V S , and the dissipation of shear strain energy Q À1 have been measured as functions of oscillation period T o , temperature T, and, for the first time, grain size. At sufficiently high T all four specimens display similar absorption band viscoelastic behavior, adequately represented for 1000 < T < 1200 or 1300°C and 1 < T o < 100 s, by the expression] a with A = 7.5 Â 10 2 s Àa mm a , a = 0.26 and E = 424 kJ mol À1 . This mildly grain-size-sensitive viscoelastic behavior of melt-free polycrystalline olivine is attributed to a combination of elastically and diffusionally accommodated grain boundary sliding, the latter becoming progressively more important with increasing T and/or T o . Extrapolation to the larger (mm-cm) grain sizes expected in the Earth's upper mantle yields levels of dissipation comparable with those observed seismologically, implying that the same grain-size-sensitive processes might be responsible for much of the observed seismic wave attenuation. The temperature sensitivity of V S is increased substantially by the viscoelastic relaxation allowing the lateral variability of wave speeds to be associated with relatively small temperature perturbations.

[1] Five melt-bearing polycrystalline olivine aggregates have been newly prepared by hot isostatic pressing and tested at high temperature and pressure with torsional forcedoscillation and microcreep methods. Cylindrical specimens, varying in average grain size from 7 to 52 mm, were annealed and then tested during slow staged cooling under 200 MPa pressure from maximum temperatures of 1240-1300°C where they contained basaltic melt fractions ranging from $0.0001 to 0.037. For temperatures !1000°C, pronounced departures from elastic behavior are evident in strain energy dissipation Q À1 and associated dispersion of the shear modulus G. In marked contrast with the high-temperature viscoelastic behavior of melt-free materials, a broad dissipation peak is observed for each of the melt-bearing specimens -superimposed upon a melt-enhanced level of monotonically frequency-and temperature-dependent ''background'' dissipation. The oscillation period at which the peak is centered decreases systematically with increasing temperature. A ''global'' model comprising an Andrade-pseudoperiod background plus Gaussian peak accounts adequately for the variation of Q À1 with frequency, temperature, average grain size and melt fraction. In the following paper (Part II) a microstructural explanation for the observed viscoelastic behavior is sought and the global model is used to extrapolate the experimental data to the conditions of teleseismic wave propagation in the Earth's upper mantle.

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