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Controls on juvenile ash morphologies in lava fountains: insights from laboratory experiments

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Abstract

Hawaiian lava fountains produce a wide variety of pyroclasts, including achneliths, i.e., fluidal juvenile fragments. These range from nearly perfect spheres to very elongate Pele’s hairs, but the controls on such variations are not yet entirely clear. We therefore conduct laboratory-scale experiments using magmas of three different compositions (olivine-melilitite with 38 wt.% SiO2, alkali basalt with 45 wt.% SiO2, and basaltic trachyandesite with 54 wt.% SiO2). These magmas are ejected from a crucible using two different gas driving pressures (3 and 10 MPa) which correspond to low and high exit velocities. All magmas are at the same initial temperature of 1200 °C, and each run is somewhat comparable to a very short (< 1 s) lava fountain or Strombolian pulse. We collect and sieve the artificial ejecta and focus on two ash fractions, 0.71–0.5 mm (narrow + 1ɸ) and 88–63 µm (narrow + 4ɸ). We measure the componentry, morphometric parameters, and internal textures of these particles. We find two end-members in terms of fluidal ash morphologies: (1) olivine-melilitite ejected at low velocity mostly generates spheres and other equant shapes; (2) basaltic trachy-andesite ejected at high speed mostly generates Pele’s hairs and other elongate shapes. Natural achneliths from the 1959 Kīlauea Iki eruption (Hawaii, USA) are most similar in shape to the artificial ones generated with the alkali basalt ejected at high speed, and mostly consist of fluidal elongate grains and Pele’s tears. We analyze shape-controlling processes using high-speed video recordings of the experiments, and filament thinning theory. When hydrodynamic fragmentation occurs, surface tension acts to reshape clasts towards a sphere. Opposing factors can extend filament thinning timescales, and the two most relevant ones here are magma viscosity and ejection speed. This, along with the effects of rapid cooling, largely explains the observed morphological variety in artificial and natural fluidal-shaped juvenile ash.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sebastian Mueller, Bruce Houghton, and Wendy Cockshell for providing the Kīlauea Iki 1959 samples. We thank Jacopo Taddeucci and Lucy Porritt for their comments on a draft of this paper. We thank Ulrich Küppers and an anonymous reviewer for constructive journal reviews and guest editor Benjamin Andrews for efficient handling.

Funding

This study was funded by Discovery Grants to PSR from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (RGPIN-2015–06782 and RGPIN-2020–06349).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut National de La Recherche Scientifique, 490 Rue de La Couronne, (Qc), G1K 9A9, Quebec, Canada

    Pier Paolo Comida & Pierre-Simon Ross

  2. Physikalisch Vulkanologisches Labor, Universität Würzburg, Pleicherwall 1, 97070, Würzburg, Germany

    Bernd Zimanowski & Ralf Büttner

  3. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, Sturlugata 7, 101, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Tobias Dürig

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  1. Pier Paolo Comida
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Correspondence to Pier Paolo Comida.

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Editorial responsibility: B.J. Andrews

This paper constitutes part of a topical collection: What pyroclasts can tell us.

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Comida, P.P., Ross, PS., Zimanowski, B. et al. Controls on juvenile ash morphologies in lava fountains: insights from laboratory experiments. Bull Volcanol 85, 23 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-023-01637-0

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