Impact of textural patterns on rock weathering rates and size
distribution of weathered grains
Abstract
Rock texture has a critical influence on the way rocks weather. The most
important textural factors affecting weathering are grain size and the
presence of cracks and stylolites. These discontinuities operate as
planes of mechanical weakness at which chemical weathering is enhanced.
However, it is unclear how different rock textures impact weathering
rates and the size of weathered grains. Here, we use a numerical model
to simulate weathering of rocks possessing grain boundaries, cracks, and
stylolites. We ran simulations with either synthetic or natural patterns
of discontinuities. We found that for all patterns, weathering rates
increase with discontinuity density. When the density was
<~25%, the weathering rate of synthetic
patterns followed the order: grid >honeycomb
>Voronoi >brick-wall. For higher values, all
weathering rates were similar. We also found that weathering rates
decreased as the tortuosity of the pattern increased. Moreover, we show
that textural patterns strongly impact the size distributions of
detached grains. Rocks with an initial monomodal grain size distribution
produce weathered fragments that are normally distributed. In contrast,
rocks with an initial log-normal size distribution produce weathered
grains that are log-normally distributed. For the natural patterns,
weathering produced lower modality distributions.