Comment on “If not brittle: Ductile, Plastic, or Viscous? By Kelin Wang”

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1785/0220210191. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

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Authors

Marco Antonio Lopez-Sanchez , Sylvie Demouchy, Catherine Thoraval

Abstract

In continuum mechanics, viscous materials are those that lack rigidity and elastic response under shear stress. We argue that using the term viscous to refer to the aseismic lithosphere is thus a misnomer, as it denies the propagation of S-waves through the lithosphere in total contradiction to decades of seismic surveys. Likewise, viscous materials lack yield stress, which is another feature expected in most situations within the aseismic lithosphere although more difficult to assess. Aiming to reconcile the definitions of rheological terms between material and Earth and mineral sciences, we propose a decision tree chart for the use of the terms viscous, viscoelastic, plastic, and viscoplastic, all widely used terms in the materials and Earth sciences communities for describing fundamental macroscopic behavior of rocks under shear stresses.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5Z92Z

Subjects

Earth Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering

Keywords

rheology, rock rheology

Dates

Published: 2022-04-07 14:45

Last Updated: 2022-04-07 21:45

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
The authors acknowledge there are no conflicts of interest

Data Availability (Reason not available):
No data were used in this article