The impact of rheology model choices on tidal heating studies

Abstract

Every study modeling tidal heating must adopt some rheology model. Rheology models describe the relationship between the imposed stress, and the resulting deformation (strain). There are a wealth of rheology models that have been developed to describe experimental and seismic data. In this work I collate a wide range of experimental data and compare it to rheology models that are commonly used in tidal heating studies. I use this data set to constrain values of the dimensionless Andrade parameter ζ. I find that the resulting ζ values vary by orders of magnitude, far more than is typically explored in tidal heating studies. For the case of Europa’s mantle, this could imply much more tidal heating in the silicate mantle than has been previously suggested.