The strength of the constituent rocks and minerals of the deep Earth control the ultimate fate of subducting slabs, the style of mantle convection, many surface features and the thermal evolution of the Earth. Unfortunately, these rheological properties are very poorly constrained, particularly for slab materials which are involved in many of the critical convection processes in the Earth. We propose to address this fundamental gap in our present knowledge by: (a) experimentally measuring these properties under mantle conditions of Pressure and temperature, (b) developing an understanding of the processes at an atomic level through numerical modelling and (c) applying the results of (a) and (b) to geophysical data through modelling the response of real rock compositions (in terms of LPO development, grain size evolution, etc) to stress-induced mantle flow. The members of the CRP are international leaders in all three of these fields and, with the recent advances in available techniques we believe that we have, for the first time, a realistic possibility of quantifying the rheological behaviour of the deep Earth.
Dr. David Dobson (Project Leader)
Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom Professor
Patrick Cordier
Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
Dr. Daniel Frost; Professor David Rubie
Universität Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
Dr. David Mainprice; Dr. Andréa Tommasi
Université Montpellier II, Montpellier, France
Dr. Caetano Rodrigues Miranda; Dr. Sandro Scandolo
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
Prof. John Brodholt
University College London, London, United Kingdom
