Constrains on Crustal Accretion Obtained from Cooling Rate Calculations with a Thermo-Mechanical Model of Fast-Spreading Mid-Ocean Ridges

We have used a thermo-mechanical model designed to find steady-state solutions of motion and temperature with variable viscosity, heat diffusion, heat advection, hydrothermal cooling and latent heat release. Cases analogous to the "gabbro glacier" (G accretion structure), "sheeted sills" (S structure) and "mixed shallow and MTZ lenses" (M structure) were computed with and without sheeted dyke level modeling. The results show that thermal patterns near the ridge mainly depend on hydrothermal cooling. Several hydrothermal cooling cracking temperature have been used in order to illustrate the present scientific debate on the penetration depth and efficiency of hydrothermal flows. Second, higher cooling rates are obtained for the G structures. Third, whereas the subsolidus cooling rates, SCR, decrease monotonically with depth, the igneous cooling rates, ICR, display local minima at the merging levels of the upper and lower lenses. It appears that ICR reveal the near-ridge thermal and mechanical structures, whereas the lower value of the initial-to-closure temperature ranges used for SCR cause shifts farther from the ridge that reduces the ability of SCR to discriminate the ridge thermo-mechanical configuration. It also indicates that the common assumption that ICR and SCR should be similar is probably over-simplified. Finally, the cooling rates obtained bears the clear signature of the three intrusion hypothesis. The results show that numerical modeling of the lower crust's thermo-mechanical properties may provide new insights to discriminate among hypotheses related to G, M and S structures for fast-spreading ridges.; Thermal history obtained for the Gabro Glacier (top panels), Mixed shallow and MTZ zone (middle panels) and Sheeted Sills hypothesis (bottom panels)for the magma intrusion at ridge. Columns corresponds to various hydrothermal cooling and viscosity hypothesis.