Mantle superplasticity and its self-made demise

Takehiko Hiraga (), Tomonori Miyazaki, Miki Tasaka and Hidehiro Yoshida
Additional contact information
Takehiko Hiraga: Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0032, Japan
Tomonori Miyazaki: Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0032, Japan
Miki Tasaka: Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0032, Japan
Hidehiro Yoshida: Nano Ceramics Center, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0047, Japan

Nature, 2010, vol. 468, issue 7327, 1091-1094

Abstract: Superplasticity goes underground Superplasticity, an unusual capability of a solid crystalline material to deform plastically beyond its normal breaking point, has been found in metals and even ceramics. Superplastic behaviour is also thought to occur in some geological materials, including Earth's lower mantle, but until now it had not been demonstrated in geomaterials in the laboratory. Hiraga et al. now report that synthetic rocks that are good analogues for mantle composites do exhibit superplasticity, undergoing up to 500% elongation. Their calculations show that mantle superplastic flow is accompanied by significant grain growth that can change fine-grained rocks to coarse-grained aggregates, resulting in increasing mantle viscosity — and finally the termination of superplastic flow.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09685 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:468:y:2010:i:7327:d:10.1038_nature09685

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature09685

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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