Time: October 28, 4PM
Place: S12

NUMERICAL MODELLING IN GEOLOGY AND TECTONICS – METHODS FOR FLUIDS WITH MEMORY

Prof. Louis Moresi,
School of Geoscience & School of Mathematical Sciences,
Monash University, Australia.

Modelling is a fundamental component of the scientific process. It can refer to mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena, laboratory-scale physical representations of natural systems, computational realisations of interacting processes, or, more commonly, some combination of all of these.

To a structural geologist, modelling offers the ability to take complicated, slowly evolving, unmanagably large (or small !), inaccessibly hot or high-pressure geological systems, simplify them and transform them to a human scale. This quickly develops into an untuitive understanding of the basic processes themselves which can be taken back into the field.

The basic characteristics of rocks deforming on a geological timescale are those of “complex” fluids - materials which are highly non-linear and have a memory of the stress / strain-rate history they have endured during their deformation. Complicated structures emerge during the deformation which are not readily predictable from the initial conditions. Our approach may be transferable to other complex fluid applications.