Abstract
Flow in the Earth’s mantle causes preferred orientation of crystals
called Lattice/Crystal Preferred orientation (LPO or CPO). This
preferred orientation is one of the main reasons why seismic anisotropy
is observed. Seismic anisotropy observations could therefore be used to
constrain the mantle flow in geodynamic models through tracking CPO
evolution, and computing the resulting elastic tensor and the ansiotropy
predicted at the surface. Even though there are many types of CPO
models, only a few studies include CPO calculations due to the
complexity and computational cost. Here we implemented an extended
version of the CPO model D-Rex into the open source community
geodynamics code ASPECT. We show that the implementation is correct, how
to use it and that it is feasible and important to use in large 3D
models. We also show that it is important to calculate CPO, especially
for models focusing on plate boundary of smaller scale flow because the
resulting elastic directions can greatly deviate from the flow
direction. The added infrastructure will also allow for future
enhancement, testing and even replacement of the CPO model.