Plate bending, energetics of subduction and modeling of mantle convection: A boundary element approach

Several authors have suggested that mantle convection is primarily resisted by strong subduction zones, which if true implies small or even negative values of the exponent β in the Nusselt number/Rayleigh number relation Nu∼Raβ. To evaluate this hypothesis, we use the boundary element method (BEM) to study the energetics of subduction in a two-dimensional system comprising two purely viscous plates, a subducting plate (SP) and an overriding...