Experimental Investigation of Mass Transport, Dynamics, and Stirring in Isolated Thermal Plumes.

Abstract

Significant differences exist between isotopic signatures of typical mid-ocean ridge basalts and those associated with many ocean islands, with ocean island basalts (OIB) generally exhibiting more variability in trace element concentrations and a bias towards enrichment in more primitive isotopes in some cases. Such observations coupled with other geophysical evidence have been used to suggest that OIB’s are surface manifestations of upwellings originating in the deep interior near the core-mantle boundary that interact with distinct geochemical reservoirs as material is transported from the Earth’s interior to the surface. Although many have studied the chemistry and dynamics of these mantle plumes, fundamental questions remain.

Lagrangian coherent structures and elements of dynamical systems theory are used to extract key material lines and surfaces in isolated laminar plumes. These structures are shown to provide a taxonomic picture of plumes operating in different regimes, to govern how the plume interacts with the ambient during its ascent, and to have a pronounced effect on the origin of mass transported by the plume. A metric is developed to provide a means of predicting the morphology of mass transported by a general flow, and the rise velocity of the starting plume is used to investigate time scales for liftoff.

All investigations are conducted using a series of experiments and numerical models where laminar, thermal plumes are generated in a high Prandtl number fluid having strongly temperature dependent viscosity. Experimental data are acquired using a custom-built stereoscopic particle image velocimetry with thermochromic liquid crystals to measure the 3D flow and temperature fields within the tank. A hybrid particle image/particle tracking velocimetry scheme is presented which provides improved robustness to particle pattern deformation when using PIV techniques.

In agreement with others, we find starting plumes rise with an essentially constant velocity for a significant portion of their evolution. During the time necessary to traverse the depth of the tank, the strongest experimental case considered has the capacity to reduce heterogeneity length scales by a factor of at least 1000.