True Polar Wander of Bodies with Elastic Lithospheres: the Role of Elastic Energy in the Lithosphere

Details True Polar Wander of Bodies with Elastic Lithospheres: the Role of Elastic Energy in the Lithosphere True Polar Wander of Bodies with Elastic Lithospheres: the Role of Elastic Energy in the Lithosphere

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.1312m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #13.12; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.507

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

True polar wander (TPW) refers to the reorientation of the rotation axis of a body in response to changes in the inertia tensor due to mass redistribution. Since the state of the lowest kinetic energy for a rigid body corresponds to rotation about the principal axis associated with the largest moment of inertia, it is generally assumed that any internal energy dissipation will tend to drive the body to that state. The equatorial location of the Tharsis province on Mars, and the polar location of Enceladus' hot spot may be explained by reorientation of these bodies due to TPW (Matsuyama et al. 2006, JGR, 111, E02003; Nimmo and Pappalardo 2006, Nature, 441).
Ojakangas and Stevenson (1986, BAAS, 18) indicate that the minimum total energy state may not correspond to principal axis rotation for planets with elastic lithospheres because reorientation generates elastic strains within the lithosphere, which reduces the energy available to drive further reorientation. We generalize the approach of Matsuyama et al. (2006, JGR, 111, E02003) to obtain TPW solutions by finding the minimum total energy state that includes a self-consistent elastic energy stored in the lithosphere. We expect the addition of the lithospheric strain term to reduce the total amount of reorientation compared to analyses that neglect this effect. This stabilizing effect is likely to be less important on bodies which have broken plates (Earth) compared with those that have continuous plates (Venus, Mars).

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