Program > Browse abstracts by speaker > Laumonier Mickael

Plate boundaries accommodate large displacement and stress visible at all scales from pluri-kilometric mountain range down to the infrananometric crystal defect and various depths within the lithosphere. For instance, continental collision settings exhibit shallow, brittle deformation with thrust and nappes stacking while deep deformation is not accessible to direct observation. However, warm temperature like in lower crustal levels may facilitate stress release. Also, the presence of melt is of particular interest mostly because its mobility strongly decreases the stress of a rock, according to the “critical melt fraction”. Although rheological properties of partially molten rocks have been widely studied, works involving relatively low melt fraction (

Here, we present preliminary experimental results of incipient partial melting of a mafic rock with two objectives: (1) determine the chemical composition of lower crustal melts that participate in the differentiation and production of the continental crust and (2) characterize incipient melt fraction and distribution in a mafic system. The latter objective will be completed by deformation experiments to constrain the critical melt fraction in mafic systems, melt mobility and rheological behavior of the lower crust.