Modeling ice and olivine CPO evolution and its affect on large-scale flow in two-way coupled simulations

We present a spectral-space CPO model that allows for efficient and seamless simulation of anisotropic polycrystalline flows at large scale, relevant for ice sheets and Earth’s upper mantle. The CPO model is two-way coupled with a bulk orthotropic power-law rheology using a linear grain homogenization scheme, making analytical and frame-independent calculations of CPO-induced viscous anisotropy possible and computationally cheap. The effect of two-way coupling flow and CPO evolution is explored in idealized finite element simulations of ice stream flow and mantle thermal convection. In both cases, we find that strain-rate fields are non-trivially affected, and we briefly discuss the consequences for ice-stream self-reinforcement and the coupling between plate motions and the sublithospheric mantle.

This contribution is mainly focused on introducing our modeling framework “specfab” to the wider community.