Interstrat-An Expert System to Help Identify Interstratified Clay Minerals from Powder XRD Data: I. Description of the Program

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Abstract
The INTERSTRAT program has been specifically designed to aid the geologist in the identification of the phyllosilicates from powder XRD data. The program achieves this by comparing the experimental00ld-spacings with a knowledge base of diffraction parameters; a set of likely solutions is then displayed. The method employed by INTERSTRAT is analogous to that used by the clay mineralogist whereby the clays are initially identified down to the group level from the d(OOl) data alone. This procedure also utilises thed-spacings collected from clays that have been subjected to standard clay mineral treatments, i.e. glycolation and heating to 300~ and 500~ One of the most important features of INTERSTRAT is its knowledge base of d-spacings for the interstratified clay minerals in which calculatedd(00l)spacings for an individual mixed-layer clay are recorded with respect to its Reichweite, the state under which the d-spacings were collected and the percentage of the mixed-layer components.