Geological materials exhibit complex mechanical behaviour across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. When polycrystalline aggregates such as glacier ice, mantle rocks, or crustal shear zones deform, their large-scale dynamics are fundamentally influenced by evolving microstructures. Processes such as crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO) development, grain-size evolution, dynamic recrystallisation, damage accumulation, phase mixing, and strain localization can strongly modify rheology, anisotropy, and deformation patterns.
Despite studying very different materials, researchers in geodynamics, tectonics, rock mechanics, and cryosphere science increasingly face the same challenge: understanding how evolving microstructure influences bulk rheology and deformation across scales, and how these effects can be represented in constitutive laws and numerical models.
This session aims to bring together researchers investigating these questions across disciplines and materials. We welcome contributions addressing the links between microstructure, rheology, and deformation, including but not limited to:
Deformation and flow across scales
Evolution of microstructure, CPO, and the anisotropy of physical properties
Rheology and constitutive laws
Strain localization, weakening and damage
Experimental, numerical, and observational constraints
Contributions from researchers at all career stages are welcome, and we especially encourage submissions led by early career scientists.
We particularly encourage contributions that bridge scales, combine multiple approaches, or foster exchange between traditionally separate research communities. We hope this session will provide a forum where ideas, methods, and modelling approaches can be exchanged across communities that do not often interact, despite facing remarkably similar questions about deformation and rheology.