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An insulating plate drifting over a thermally convecting fluid: the thermal blanket effect on plume motion and the emergence of a unidirectionally moving mode

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2022

Yadan Mao Open the ORCID record for Yadan Mao [Opens in a new window]
Yadan Mao*
Affiliation:
Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory, Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, PR China
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

Floating rather stably above the convective mantle, continents exert a thermal blanket effect on the mantle by locally accumulating heat and altering the flow structure, which in turn affect continent motion. This thermal-mechanic feedback has been captured by a simplified model―a thermally insulating plate floating freely over a bottom-heated convecting fluid. Previous studies have revealed that, as plate size increases, plate motion transitions from long-term stagnancy over cold downwelling to short-term stagnancy over hot upwelling, termed stagnant modes (SMs) I and II, respectively, and eventually to a unidirectionally moving mode (UMM) with no stagnancy. During SM I/II, the adjacent hot/cold plumes are observed to move toward/away from the plate. The present study quantifies these plume motions through analysis on a partially insulated loop model established for SM I and SM II, respectively. The model predictions are well verified by results of numerical simulation. Moreover, the dominant frequency of plate speed is shown to increase linearly with plate size, with an abrupt jump as the coupling mode transitions from SM I to SM II. This suggests that the enhanced thermal blanket effect with plate size enables an increasingly fast feedback between the slowdown of a plate and the strengthening of hot upwelling which boosts plate motion. When plate motion is boosted before it stops, the UMM emerges. The predicted critical plate size for the UMM is well validated by simulation results. Geological implications of the results for continent motion, continent–mantle coupling and particularly the migration of plume and subduction sites are discussed.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Mantle convection Convection: Plumes/thermals
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 942 , 10 July 2022 , A25
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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