A Library of Elastic Tensors for Lowermost Mantle Seismic Anisotropy Studies and Comparison with Seismic Observations

Elastic Tensor Library Information
All metadata is included in the pdf file for descriptions of each elastic tensor. The exact mechanism for lowermost mantle seismic anisotropy remains unknown; however, work on the elasticity and deformation of lower mantle materials has constrained a few possible options. The most probable minerals producing anisotropy are bridgmanite, post-perovskite, and ferropericlase. While there is an extensive literature on the elasticity and deformation of lower mantle minerals, we create a comprehensive uniform database of D” anisotropy scenarios. In order to characterize a range of the possible fabrics for D” anisotropy, we carry out VPSC (visco-plastic self-consistent modeling) to predict textures for each proposed mineral and dominant slip system. We numerically deform each mineral under different geometrical scenarios: simple shear, pure shear, and extension. By using published single crystal elasticity values, we produce a library of 336 candidate elastic tensors.