The fluid dynamics of crystal settling and flotation in a lunar magma ocean

Details The fluid dynamics of crystal settling and flotation in a lunar magma ocean The fluid dynamics of crystal settling and flotation in a lunar magma ocean

Oct 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011epsc.conf.1499s&link_type=abstract

EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011, held 2-7 October 2011 in Nantes, France. http://meetings.copernicus.org/epsc-dps2011, p.1499

Computer Science

Scientific paper

The smoking-gun evidence for a lunar magma ocean is the anorthosite-rich highlands on the Moon, which are thought to have formed by flotation of buoyant plagioclase crystals in a solidifying magma ocean. A puzzling aspect of this idea is that plagioclase only appears in the crystallization sequence during the late stages of solidification, i.e. once the magma ocean is approximately 70-80 % solidified [1], which is difficult to reconcile with the fluid-dynamical constraints on crystal settling. The goal of this study is to gain insights into the differentiation history of the lunar magma ocean by investigating the fluid-dynamical conditions that govern crystal settling or flotation. Our approach complements earlier work [2,3] by employing direct numerical simulations to fully resolve flow at the scale of the crystals and by focusing primarily on the non-turbulent boundary layers of the lunar magma ocean. We find that the relative settling of two mineral phases with different densities is hindered substantially already at low to moderate crystal fractions, because the frequency and duration of crystal collisions increases rapidly with crystal fraction. We hypothesize that tidal heating and cumulate overturn may have been critical in facilitating plagioclase flotation.

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