Shear-enhanced permeability development of magma vesiculating in cylindrical conduits

TL;DR

This study investigates how shear conditions influence permeability development in vesiculating magma within cylindrical conduits, revealing distinct regimes of porosity and permeability linked to isotropic and anisotropic expansion.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence on the role of shear and pore anisotropy in controlling magma permeability during vesiculation, highlighting the importance of shear conditions in magmatic networks.

Findings

Percolation onset correlates with shear deformation in isotropic expansion.

Anisotropic expansion results in low percolation thresholds (<20%) with stable permeability.

Connected porosity strongly correlates with permeability, varying with shear conditions.

Abstract

During magma vesiculation, permeability is established when growing bubbles begin to form connected networks, which allow fluids to percolate. This percolation threshold controls the relative rates between magma ascent and volatile exsolution, which in turn dictate eruptive style. Percolation is controlled primarily by total vesicularity and shear conditions. We performed vesiculation experiments on rhyolitic glass in a spatially confined, cylindrical, conduit-like geometry. The amount of shear experienced by the sample is controlled by varying the sample and confining diameters to allow for various degrees of free (isotropic) followed by confined (anisotropic) expansion. Pore anisotropy develops sub-parallel to the flow direction. We measure the total and connected porosity and permeability of the vesiculated samples. We observe two regimes of behavior for samples dominated by 1) isotropic expansion, in which the onset of percolation corresponds with the beginning of shear deformation and 2) anisotropic expansion which shows low percolation thresholds (<20%) with a near-constant permeability even with increasing porosity. We find a good correlation between connected porosity and permeability, with distinct trends for sheared and unsheared samples. The development of anisotropy in vesiculating magmas is ubiquitous in magmatic networks and our data highlight the importance of considering the in situ shear conditions when investigating the percolation threshold.