Conditions for crust and tube formation in lava flows with power-law rheology

Abstract

We studied the conditions of crust and tube formation of a lava flow moving under the effect of gravity in a rectangular cross-section channel and assumed a power-law rheology for lava. We followed the work of Valerio et al. (2008), who studied the effect of surface cooling on the formation and accretion of the crust in the central region of the channel, assuming for lava a Newtonian rheology. According to these authors, tube formation is influenced by topography and channel morphology. In this work, we extended this study to a non-Newtonian rheology, in particular to the power-law rheology. Results indicate that a power-law rheology strongly influences the condition of crust formation but does not produce significant differences as a function of topographical or morphological variations.