Evolution of Triple Junctions

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 516-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek York

The condition for stability at a triple junction of three normally spreading ridges should read: all ridge orientations may be stable if and only if the three ridge elements occupy an angular spread of more than 180°. This consideration leads to the conclusion that, in one mode of formation of an RRR triple junction, at least one active ridge segment should be extinguished. A fossil rise in the east-central Pacific is examined as a possible illustration of the argument.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hany Khalil ◽  
Fabio Capitanio ◽  
Alexander Cruden

Divergent triple junctions are stable plate margins where three spreading ridges meet. Although it is accepted that this configuration is inherited from an earlier phase of continental rifting, how post-breakup triple junctions emerge from the separation of two plates remains unclear. By documenting the strain rate history recorded in the three rift-arms of several modern and ancient triple junctions, we show that deformation is episodic and localized in only one or two rifts at any given time. We further investigate this behavior in three-dimensional (3D) analog experiments of rifting, under a range of kinematic boundary conditions and containing a variety of pre-existing lithospheric heterogeneities. Deformation in the experiments is characterized by strain jumps and rift abandonment, comparable to natural observations. Boundary rotation during extension induces oblique stretching directions, along-strike strain gradients and forces significant strain jump to reduce the number of rifts segments active. Models that comprise lithospheres ranging from homogenous to containing a triple junction-like pre-existing heterogeneities, never developed a three-armed rift, where all rift segments are active at same time, at any stage. Our experimental results indicate that, unlike mature, successful, and stable oceanic triple junctions, early-stage continental rifting progresses through unstable “double-junctions” characterized by repeated strain jumps and rift failures and reactivations.


Terra Nova ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Meschede ◽  
Udo Barckhausen ◽  
Martin Engels ◽  
Wilhelm Weinrebe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie M. Hartten ◽  
Christopher J. Cox ◽  
Paul E. Johnston ◽  
Daniel E. Wolfe ◽  
Scott Abbott ◽  
...  

Abstract. As the 2015/2016 El Niño was gathering strength in late 2015, scientists at the Earth System Research Laboratory's Physical Sciences Division proposed and led the implementation of NOAA's El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) Field Campaign. ENRR observations included wind and thermodynamic profiles of the atmosphere over the near-equatorial east-central Pacific Ocean, many of which were collected from two field sites and transmitted in near-real time for inclusion in global forecasting models. From 26 January to 28 March 2016, twice-daily rawinsonde observations were made from Kiritimati (pronounced Christmas) Island (2.0°N, 157.4°E; call sign CXENRR). From 16 February to 16 March 2016, three to eight radiosondes were launched each day from the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown (allocated call sign WTEC) as it travelled southeast from Hawaii to service Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) buoys along longitudes 140°W and 125°W and then north to San Diego, California. Both the rapid and the remote nature of these deployments created particular difficulties in collecting and disseminating the soundings; these are described together with the methods used to reprocess the data after the field campaign finished. The reprocessed and lightly quality-controlled data have been put into an easy-to-read text format, qualifying them to be termed Level 2 soundings. They are archived and freely available for public access at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) in the form of two separate data sets: one consisting of 125 soundings from Kiritimati Island (doi:10.7289/V55Q4T5K), the other of 193 soundings from the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown (doi:10.7289/V5X63K15). Of the Kiritimati soundings, 94 % reached the tropopause and 88 % reached 40 hPa, while 89 % of the ship's soundings reached the tropopause and 87 % reached 40 hPa. The soundings captured the repeated advance and retreat of the ITCZ at Kiritimati, a variety of marine tropospheric environments encountered by the ship, and lower-stratospheric features of the 2015–2016 QBO (quasi-biennial oscillation), all providing a rich view of the local atmosphere's response to the east-central Pacific's extremely warm waters during the 2015/16 El Niño.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Günter Gottstein ◽  
Lazar S. Shvindlerman

Grain boundary triple junctions are the structural elements of a polycrystal. Recently it was recognized that they can strongly impact the microstructural evolution, and therefore there engender new opportunities to control and to design the grain microstructure of fine-grained and nanocrystalline materials due to their effect on recovery, recrystallization and grain growth. The measurement of triple junction energy and mobility is thus of great importance. The line energy of a triple junction constructs an additional driving force of grain growth. Taking the triple line energy into account, a modified form of the Zener force and the Gibbs-Thomson relation can be derived to reveal the influence of the triple line energy on second phase particles and the change of the equilibrium concentration of vacancies in the vicinity of voids at a grain boundary. The impact of triple junctions on the sintering of nanopowders is discussed. The role of “grain boundary - free surface” triple lines in the adhesive contact formation between spherical nanoparticles is considered. It is shown that there is a critical value of the triple line energy above which the nanoparticles do not stick together. Based on this result, a new nanoparticle agglomeration mechanism is proposed, which accounts for the formation of large agglomerates of crystallographically aligned nanoparticles during the nanopowder processing.


Author(s):  
Tianbo Yu ◽  
Niels Hansen ◽  
Xiaoxu Huang

Commercial purity aluminium at true strains ε =2∼5.5 was annealed in a wide temperature range (from room temperature to 220°C), and the evolution of microstructure was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) techniques. Triple junctions in an ultrafine lamellar structure are classified into three categories based on the structural morphology, and a relationship is formulated between the density (length per unit volume) of triple junctions and the boundary spacing. The triple junction density increases with increasing strain during plastic deformation and decreases during isochronal and isothermal annealing. Based on TEM and EBSD observations, thermally activated triple junction motion is identified as the key process during the recovery of highly strained aluminium, leading to the removal of thin lamellae with small dihedral angles at the ends and structural coarsening. A mechanism for recovery by triple junction motion is proposed, which can underpin the general observation that a lamellar structure formed by plastic deformation during annealing can evolve into an equiaxed structure, preceding further structural coarsening and recrystallization. Within this framework, the grain boundary surface tension on triple junctions is discussed based on the structural parameters characterizing the deformed and annealed microstructure.


2001 ◽  
Vol 677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Satta ◽  
Luciano Colombo ◽  
Fabrizio Cleri

ABSTRACTTopological changes in microstructure are strictly related to the microscopic evolution of triple junctions (TJ). The three-sided grain disappearance, usually called T2 process, is here investigated via 3D-atomistic modeling. In particular the stability of a three-sided grain insertion in a triple junction in silicon is studied within the framework of Molecular Dynamics simulations. The Stillinger-Weber interatomic potential is adopted and constant-traction border conditions are considered to ensure a proper embedding of the atomistic region in a virtually infinite bulk continuum. Dealing with the T2-event, the critical radius below which the three- sided inner grain become unstable is evaluated to be three to four times the lattice constant of silicon. Moreover, we show that the instability sets in through the amorphization of the central shrinking grain.


2012 ◽  
Vol 322 ◽  
pp. 129-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Portavoce ◽  
Ivan Blum ◽  
Khalid Hoummada ◽  
Dominique Mangelinck ◽  
Lee Chow ◽  
...  

With the development of nanotechnologies, the number of industrial processes dealing with the production of nanostructures or nanoobjects is in constant progress (microelectronics, metallurgy). Thus, knowledge of atom mobility and the understanding of atom redistribution in nanoobjects and during their fabrication have become subjects of increasing importance, since they are key parameters to control nanofabrication. Especially, todays materials can be both composed of nanoobjects as clusters or decorated defects, and contain a large number of interfaces as in nanometer-thick film stacking and buried nanowires or nanoislands. Atom redistribution in this type of materials is quite complex due to the combination of different effects, such as composition and stress, and is still not very well known due to experimental issues. For example, it has been shown that atomic transport in nanocrystalline layers can be several orders of magnitude faster than in microcrystalline layers, though the reason for this mobility increase is still under debate. Effective diffusion in nanocrystalline layers is expected to be highly dependent on interface and grain boundary (GB) diffusion, as well as triple junction diffusion. However, experimental measurements of diffusion coefficients in nanograins, nanograin boundaries, triple junctions, and interfaces, as well as investigations concerning diffusion mechanisms, and defect formation and mobility in these different diffusion paths are today still needed, in order to give a complete picture of nanodiffusion and nanosize effects upon atom transport. In this paper, we present recent studies dealing with diffusion in nanocrystalline materials using original simulations combined with usual 1D composition profile measurements, or using the particular abilities of atom probe tomography (APT) to experimentally characterize interfaces. We present techniques allowing for the simultaneous measurement of grain and GB diffusion coefficients in polycrystals, as well as the measurement of nanograin lattice diffusion and triple junction diffusion. We also show that laser-assisted APT microscopy is the ideal tool to study interface diffusion and nanodiffusion in nanostructures, since it allows the determination of 1D, 2D and 3D atomic distributions that can be analyzed using diffusion analytical solutions or numerical simulation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Mensing ◽  
Margaret Stewart ◽  
Mark Hannington ◽  
Alan Baxter ◽  
Dorothee Mertmann

<p>The Mangatolu Triple Junction (MTJ) is an intraoceanic back-arc spreading center that is host to at least 3 distinct hydrothermal systems. It is located in the NE Lau Basin, which opened due to rollback of the Pacific plate along the Tonga-Kermadec trench. At the MTJ, three spreading centers meet in a ridge-ridge-ridge (RRR)-type triple junction separating the Tonga plate in the east, the Niuafo’ou microplate in the southwest, and an unnamed microplate in the north. The MTJ is directly linked to the formation and evolution of the Northeast Lau microplate mosaic, as plate fragmentation inevitably results in the formation of triple junctions, but it remains unclear whether the spreading centers are the drivers of plate fragmentation or a consequence of stress relocation related to microplate rotation. Detailed investigation of the geology and structural setting of the MTJ therefore provides valuable insight into the development in the northeast Lau Basin. Here we present the first comprehensive 1:200,000 geological map of the MTJ, based on a compilation of marine geophysical data (hydroacoustics, magnetics, and gravity) derived from 7 research cruises that have investigated the region between 2004 and 2018. Analysis of the mapped geological formations at the MTJ shows the importance of relict arc crust originating from the Tofua Arc in the architecture of the triple junction, which includes three stages of back-arc crust development and extensive off-axis volcanism. The spreading centers along each arm of the MTJ exploit pre-existing crustal weaknesses, interpreted to have formed during initial Lau Basin opening. A reconstruction of the basin opening, based on the mapped features and published spreading rates, revealed that initiation of the MTJ commenced approximately 180,000 years ago, consistent with the very recent and ongoing dynamic evolution of the NE Lau Basin and emerging microplate mosaic. Intersecting fabrics indicate sequential evolution of the 3 arms of the triple junction, with extension along the northeast arm dominant in the early history and more recent extension along the southern and western arms. The results of this study contribute to our growing understanding of the tectonic framework of the northeast Lau Basin and the role of triple junctions in microplate formation.</p>


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