Experimental quantification of permeability of partially molten mantle rock

•We synthesize partially molten olivine-basalt samples with various melt fractions.•We image their 3-D melt distributions using synchrotron X-ray microtomography.•We quantify the grain size distribution, melt interconnectivity, and permeability.•We simulate Stokes flow within the digitized partial melts to compute permeability.•We fit our data to obtain an empirical permeability-melt fraction relation.

Melt percolation in mantle rocks is currently poorly constrained, especially at low melt fractions. At mid-ocean ridges, for example, geochemical and geophysical observations produce divergent estimates of how much melt is present in the mantle and how quickly it moves. Accurate estimates of permeability and grain-scale melt distribution in mantle rock are necessary to reconcile these observations. We present three-dimensional (3-D), 700 nm-resolution images of olivine-basalt aggregates, containing nominal melt fractions (ϕn) between 0.02 and 0.20. Samples were prepared from a powdered mixture of San Carlos olivine and high-alumina basalt and hot-pressed in a solid-medium piston-cylinder apparatus at 1350 °C and 1.5 GPa. Images were obtained using synchrotron X-ray microtomography (SXμT) from the Advance Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Stokes flow simulations, conducted using the digital melt volume as the numerical domain, determine that the permeabilities of experimental charges range from 2×10−16 to 5×10−13m2 for ϕn=0.02 to 0.20, respectively. The simulation results are well represented by the power-law relation between permeability (k) and melt fraction (ϕ), k=ϕnd2/C, where n=2.6±0.2, and assuming a grain size of 35 μm in the experiments, C=58−22+36. These results place important new constraints on rates of melt migration and melt extraction within partially molten regions of the mantle.

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