Frictional heating of the descending lithosphere

Linear chains of active volcanoes are usually associated with oceanic trenches. It is postulated that the active volcanoes lie above the point on the slip zone between the descending lithosphere and the overlying mantle where partial melting of the descending oceanic crust takes place. By assuming that the frictional stress on the slip zone is either constant or proportional to depth, the thermal structure of the descending lithosphere is determined. The alternative theories are used to determine the shear stresses and friction coefficients for various trench-volcano systems. Values for the shear stress and friction coefficient have standard deviations of 10 and 24%, respectively. We conclude that the shear stress on a slip zone is probably weakly dependent on depth with a value near 1.35kb. Our results are compared with previous calculations.

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