Abstract
Improved understanding of the impact of crystal mush rheology on the
response of magma chambers to magmatic events is critical for better
understanding crustal igneous systems with abundant crystals. In this
study, we extend an earlier model by (Liao et al, 2018) which considers
the mechanical response of a magma chamber with poroelastic crystal
mush, by including poroviscoelastic rheology of crystal mush. We find
that the coexistence of the two mechanisms of poroelastic diffusion and
viscoelastic relaxation causes the magma chamber to react to a magma
injection event with more complex time-dependent behaviors.
Specifically, we find that the system’s short-term evolution is
dominated by the poroelastic diffusion process, while its long-term
evolution is dominated by the viscoelastic relaxation process. We
identify two post-injection timescales that represent these two stages
and examine their relation to the material properties of the system. We
find that better constraints on the poroelastic diffusion time are more
important for the potential interpretation of surface deformation using
the model. We also find that the combination of the two mechanisms
causes magma transport to reverse direction in the system, which would
successively expose crystals to magma with different chemical
compositions.