A four-dimensional X-ray tomographic microscopy study of bubble growth in basaltic foam

Don R. Baker (), Francesco Brun, Cedrick O'Shaughnessy, Lucia Mancini, Julie L. Fife and Mark Rivers
Additional contact information
Don R. Baker: Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University
Francesco Brun: Universita' degli Studi di Trieste
Cedrick O'Shaughnessy: Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University
Lucia Mancini: Elettra - Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza
Julie L. Fife: Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut
Mark Rivers: CARS, University of Chicago

Nature Communications, 2012, vol. 3, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Understanding the influence of bubble foams on magma permeability and strength is critical to investigations of volcanic eruption mechanisms. Increasing foam porosity decreases strength, enhancing the probability of an eruption. However, higher porosities lead to larger permeabilities, which can lessen the eruption hazard. Here we measure bubble size and wall thickness distributions, as well as connectivity, and calculate permeabilities and tensile strengths of basaltic foams imaged by synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy during bubble growth in hydrated basaltic melts. Rapid vesiculation produces porous foams whose fragmentation thresholds are only 9–10 MPa and whose permeabilities increase from approximately 1×10−10 to 1×10−9 m2 between 10 and 14 s despite decreasing connectivity between bubbles. These results indicate that basaltic magmas are most susceptible to failure immediately upon vesiculation and at later times, perhaps only 10's of seconds later, permeability increases may lessen the hazard of explosive, basaltic, Plinian eruptions.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2134 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:3:y:2012:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2134

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().