🌋 The influence of melt freezing on geochemical layering in the oceanic lithosphere

Lab: Sim Lab at Georgia Tech

The oceanic lithosphere is formed through the process of mantle upwelling and cooling at a mid-ocean ridge. The mantle upwells as the oceanic plates move away from each other, causing decompression melts. When the melt leaves the mantle, the oceanic crust is formed. As the crust and lithosphere move away from the warmer ridge axis, it cools down and subsides. This subsiding process causes a bathymetric high ridge axis that decreases in a vertical position as it moves away from the ridge axis. However, some of the melt never makes it to the surface and gets frozen back into the lithosphere. Therefore, this research focuses on understanding if freezing has an effect on the degree of melting, which is the measurement of the amount of melt a volume of the mantle has experienced.

My tasks includes:

• Evaluating the evolution of the global ridge system by considering the processes of melt focusing beneath mid-ocean ridges using two phase flow models
• Using Terraferma to make computational model of mid-ocean ridge’s mantle convection
• Investigating in special melting patterns at mid-ocean ridges and comparing them with the seismic data

Schematic of the initial state of two-phase flow models of mid-ocean ridges with the mesh demonstration. The center red section is the upwelling melting mantle.

Current results can be found in this proposal.