Lithospheric necking - A dynamic model for rift morphology

Details Lithospheric necking - A dynamic model for rift morphology Lithospheric necking - A dynamic model for rift morphology

Apr 1986

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1986e%26psl..77..373z&link_type=abstract

Earth and Planetary Science Letters (ISSN 0012-821X), vol. 77, no. 3-4, April 1986, p. 373-383.

Mathematics

Logic

51

Geological Faults, Geomorphology, Lithosphere, Planetary Geology, Stretching, Venus Surface, Dynamic Models, Topography, Viscosity

Scientific paper

Rifting is examined as the growth of a necking instability. A rift is nucleated by means of a small thickness perturbation imposed at the base of a strong layer which overlies a weaker substrate. The conditions for which the initial disturbance will amplify as the lithosphere extends are evaluated for a range of rheological parameters, and the associated pattern of near-surface deformation is determined. It was found that this unstable lithospheric extension results in a pattern of deformation that is consistent with the major morphological characteristics of rift zones. For an initial perturbation narrower than the dominant wavelength, deformation concentrates in a zone of width comparable to the dominant wavelength; for an initial thickness perturbation wider than the dominant wavelength, deformation develops periodically at the dominant wavelength in the region above the perturbation. It is noted that the width of a rift is essentially independent of the layer/substrate strength ratio. For a power law viscous surface layer (n = 3), the dominant wavelength varies with the layer/substrate strength ratio to the one-third power and is always larger than for a plastic surface layer of the same thickness. The unstable extension of a strong viscous surface layer may be responsible for the great width of rift zones on Venus.

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