Abstract
—The earth's tectonic plates are strong, viscoelastic shells which make up the outermost part of a thermally convecting, predominantly viscous layer. Brittle failure of the lithosphere occurs when stresses are high. In order to build a realistic simulation of the planet's evolution, the complete viscoelastic/brittle convection system needs to be considered. A particle-in-cell finite element method is demonstrated which can simulate very large deformation viscoelasticity with a strain-dependent yield stress. This is applied to a plate-deformation problem. Numerical accuracy is demonstrated relative to analytic benchmarks, and the characteristics of the method are discussed.
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(Received February 20, 2001, revised June 11, 2001, accepted June 15, 2001)
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Moresi, L., Dufour, F. & Mühlhaus, HB. Mantle Convection Modeling with Viscoelastic/Brittle Lithosphere: Numerical Methodology and Plate Tectonic Modeling. Pure appl. geophys. 159, 2335–2356 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-002-8738-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-002-8738-3