Title
Anisotropic convection model for the earth's mantle
Abstract
The paper presents a theory for modeling flow in anisotropic, viscous rock. This theory has originally been developed for the simulation of large deformation processes including the folding and kinking of multi-layered visco-elastic rock (Mühlhaus et al. [1,2]). The orientation of slip planes in the context of crystallographic slip is determined by the normal vector - the director - of these surfaces. The model is applied to simulate anisotropic mantle convection.We compare the evolution of flow patterns, Nusselt number and director orientations for isotropic and anisotropic rheologies. In the simulations we utilize two different finite element methodologies: The Lagrangian Integration Point Method Moresi et al [8] and an Eulerian formulation, which we implemented into the finite element based pde solver Fastflo (www.cmis.csiro.au/Fastflo/). The reason for utilizing two different finite element codeswas firstly to study the influence of an anisotropic power law rheology which currently is not implemented into the Lagrangian Integration point scheme [8]and secondly to study the numerical performance of Eulerian (Fastflo)- and Lagrangian integration schemes [8]. It turned out that whereas in the Lagrangian method the Nusselt number vs time plot reached only a quasi steady state where the Nusselt number oscillates around a steady state value the Eulerian scheme reaches exact steady states and produces a high degree of alignment (director orientation locally orthogonal to velocity vector almost everywhere in the computational domain). In the simulations emergent anisotropy was strongest in terms of modulus contrast in the up and down-welling plumes. Mechanisms for anisotropic material behavior in the mantle dynamics context are discussed by Christensen [3]. The dominant mineral phases in the mantle generally do not exhibit strong elastic anisotropy but they still may be oriented by the convective flow. Thus viscous anisotropy (the main focus of this paper) may or may not correlate with elastic or seismic anisotropy.
Year
DOI
Venue
2003
10.1007/3-540-44863-2_77
International Conference on Computational Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
anisotropic convection model,seismic anisotropy,lagrangian integration point scheme,lagrangian integration scheme,lagrangian integration point,anisotropic rheologies,lagrangian method,director orientation,anisotropic material behavior,anisotropic power law rheology,anisotropic mantle convection,layers,wave,rock
Isotropy,Anisotropy,Nusselt number,Computer science,Slip (materials science),Finite element method,Eulerian path,Rayleigh number,Geometry,Seismic anisotropy
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
2659
0302-9743
3-540-40196-2
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
H. Muhlhaus143.45
M. Čada200.34
L. Moresi300.68