Slab pull occurs at a convergent boundary and subduction zone. The force of the dense oceanic plate subducting under the continental plate and gravitationally being pulled into the mantle results in the rest of the plate being pulled along with it. Ridge push occurs along a divergent boundary. ...
Break-off of part of the down-going plate during continental collision occurs due to tensile stresses built-up between the deep and shallow slab, for which buoyancy is increased because of continental-crust subduction. Break-off governs the subsequent orogenic evolution but real-time observations ar...
Although subducting slabs undergo a bending deformation that resists tectonic plate motions, the magnitude of this resistance is not known because of poor constraints on slab strength. However, because slab bending slows the relatively rapid motions of oceanic plates, observed plate motions constrain the...
A Kinematic Thermal Model for Descending Slabs with Velocity Boundary Layers:A Case Study for the Tonga Subducting Slab[J]. ZHANG Keliang and WEI Dongping~ College of Earth Science,Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China.Acta Geologica Sinica(English Edition). ...
It could be achieved either by subducting more continental lithosphere or by decreasing the surface over which the slab pull is applied. Fig. 6 shows that the buoyancy force of the continental slab instead decreases toward the edge. Slab breakoff at the edges occurs after the breakoff at the...
occurs within the Vrancea slab, although it is not subducting anymore9, showing that residual stresses within locked subducted remnants are seismically released as a result of local stress perturbations9. Dehydration reactions are not intrinsically seismic14,34,46, but it occurs fast enough to ...
Subducting Slabstomography inversion incorporatingLarge numbers of earthquakes occur in subduction zones that are marked by dipping, narrow high seismic velocity slabs. The existence of these fast velocity slabs can cause serious earthquake mislocation problems that can bias estimates of seismic travel ...
Because buoyancy and strength are associated with slab age, where young slabs are more buoyant and less viscous than old ones, we performed a total of 32 simulations (Table 1) considering two subducting plate ages at the trench, 25 Myr and 150 Myr. Table 1. List of simulations. Simulations...
The plates are separated by a curvilinear viscous shear zone that follows the shape of the plate interface. The negative thermal buoyancy of the subducting slab drives the flow. No driving velocities are applied to the plates or the slab, rather the models predict the flow velocities for the ...
While most force-balance analysis assume a steady-state slab geometry, the observed shapes of subducting slabs (e.g., van der Hilst et al., 1997, Ritsema et al., 2004) are due to the time-dependent variation in both driving and resisting forces and resulting changes in plate and trench ...