Effects of wall-rock elasticity on magma flow in dykes during explosive eruptions

Abstract

Magma flow during explosive volcanic eruptions has been described assuming rigid conduits with simple cylindrical or planar geometries. Here we study the dynamics of explosive volcanic flows to take account of the role of elastic deformation of the conduit influenced by local magmatic pressure. Three cases are investigated: a dyke with elliptical cross-section, a cylindrical conduit and a deep dyke connected to a shallow cylinder. The model CPIUC (Macedonio et al., 2005) was used for simulations and generalized to account for elastic deformations of the conduit cross-section area due to magmatic overpressure. Fragmentation level is typically deeper in a dyke than in a cylinder. For flows in wide dykes pressure at the fragmentation depth can be lower than the surrounding lithostatic pressure by several tens of MPa, indicating that the wall-rocks of the dyke will be unstable, constraining the dyke width and eventually blocking the eruption. On the other hand, when the fragmentation level is shallow the corresponding lithostatic pressure is not large enough to close the dyke and eruptions from wide dykes are possible. The behaviour changes drastically when we assume the conduit is a dyke at depth that evolves to a cylinder near the surface. In this case even very wide dykes can be stable because the fragmentation level moves into the cylindrical region where deformation is negligible.