Anisotropic Convection Model for the Earth's Mantle

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 (M¨uhlhaus 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 codes was firstly to study the influence of an anisotropic power law rheo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ICCS
• Authors: Hans-B. Mühlhaus, M. Cada, Louis Moresi
• Keywords: Anisotropic, ICCS 2003, Lagrangian Integration, Lagrangian Integration Point