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Modelling the rheology of MgO under Earth’s mantle pressure, temperature and strain rates

Nature volume 481, pages 177–180 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Plate tectonics, which shapes the surface of Earth, is the result of solid-state convection in Earth’s mantle over billions of years. Simply driven by buoyancy forces, mantle convection is complicated by the nature of the convecting materials, which are not fluids but polycrystalline rocks. Crystalline materials can flow as the result of the motion of defects—point defects, dislocations, grain boundaries and so on. Reproducing in the laboratory the extreme deformation conditions of the mantle is extremely challenging. In particular, experimental strain rates are at least six orders of magnitude larger than in nature1. Here we show that the rheology of MgO at the pressure, temperature and strain rates of the mantle is accessible by multiscale numerical modelling starting from first principles and with no adjustable parameters. Our results demonstrate that extremely low strain rates counteract the influence of pressure. In the mantle, MgO deforms in the athermal regime and this leads to a very weak phase. It is only in the lowermost lower mantle that the pressure effect could dominate and that, under the influence of lattice friction, a viscosity of the order of 1021–1022 pascal seconds can be defined for MgO.

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Figure 1: Evolution of the critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) with temperature.
Figure 2: Evolution with stress of the velocity of a ½<110> screw dislocation in MgO gliding in {110} at 60 GPa and 1,500 K.
Figure 3: Influence of the strain rate and of temperature on the deformation mechanisms of MgO at four pressures.
Figure 4: Deformation mechanisms of MgO under mantle conditions, and a typical mantle strain rate of 10−16 s−1.
Figure 5: MgO viscosity profile in the layer (shown in the inset) governed by the thermally activated deformation regime.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by ANR (Diup project).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Lille 1, Unité Matériaux et Transformations, UMR CNRS 8207, F-59650 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France,

    Patrick Cordier, Jonathan Amodeo & Philippe Carrez

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  1. Patrick Cordier
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  2. Jonathan Amodeo
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  3. Philippe Carrez
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Contributions

P.C. conceived the project. P.C. and Ph.C. designed the work. J.A. and Ph.C. performed numerical simulations. All authors discussed and interpreted the results. P.C. wrote the paper with feedback and contributions from all co-authors.

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Correspondence to Patrick Cordier or Philippe Carrez.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Cordier, P., Amodeo, J. & Carrez, P. Modelling the rheology of MgO under Earth’s mantle pressure, temperature and strain rates. Nature 481, 177–180 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10687

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