An efficient and general approach for implementing thermodynamic phase equilibria information in geophysical and geodynamic studies

Abstract

We present a flexible, general, and efficient approach for implementing thermodynamic phase equilibria information (in the form of sets of physical parameters) into geophysical and geodynamic studies. The approach is based on Tensor Rank Decomposition methods, which transform the original multidimensional discrete information into a separated representation that contains significantly fewer terms, thus drastically reducing the amount of information to be stored in memory during a numerical simulation or geophysical inversion. Accordingly, the amount and resolution of the thermodynamic information that can be used in a simulation or inversion increases substantially. In addition, the method is independent of the actual software used to obtain the primary thermodynamic information, and therefore, it can be used in conjunction with any thermodynamic modeling program and/or database. Also, the errors associated with the decomposition procedure are readily controlled by the user, depending on her/his actual needs (e.g., preliminary runs versus full resolution runs). We illustrate the benefits, generality, and applicability of our approach with several examples of practical interest for both geodynamic modeling and geophysical inversion/modeling. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method is a competitive and attractive candidate for implementing thermodynamic constraints into a broad range of geophysical and geodynamic studies. MATLAB implementations of the method and examples are provided as supporting information and can be downloaded from the journal's website.