Volume 87: Geological Melts

Daniel R. Neuville, Grant S. Henderson and Donald B. Dingwell, editors

2022, i-xix + 1088 pages. ISBN 978-1-946850-08-9

Description

The initiative for the development of this volume arose from preliminary discussions between the editors that it had been 25 years, and a whole generation, since RIMG had dedicated a special issue to the topic of silicate melts and their many roles in materials and geological sciences. Back in 1995 silicate melts were being rediscovered as a vital component of the earth sciences in the wake of an increasing awareness of their structural complexity, the development of new experimental techniques and their application to the determination of structure and properties of these melts, as well as, the partially unexpected results of such studies. A further overriding theme was the emerging consensus of the concept of the glass transition as a key to the interpretation and extrapolation of structure and property determinations and as a fundamental physical transition governing many phenomena in petrology and volcanology.

The result of that confluence of interests and ambitions has been a remarkable quarter century of opportunities for the study of the molten state in both materials and geological sciences and involving national programs and international collaborations on an unprecedented scale. Collected in this volume are a compact set of chapters covering fundamental aspects of the nature of silicate melts and the implications for the systems in which they participate, both technological and natural. The contents of this volume may perhaps best be summarized as structure – properties – dynamics. The volume contains syntheses of short and medium range order, structure-property relationships, and computation-based simulations of melt structure. It continues with analyses of the properties (mechanical, diffusive, thermochemical, redox, nucleation, rheological) of melts. The dynamic behavior of melts in magmatic and volcanic systems, is then treated in the context of their behavior in magma mixing, strain localization, frictional melting, magmatic fragmentation, and hot sintering. Finally, the non-magmatic, extraterrestrial and prehistoric roles of melt and glass are presented in their respective contexts.

This volume is the cumulative effort of many people whom we gratefully thank, especially the authors of the chapters for their contributions and patience, and the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. We thank Ian Swainson and Rachel Russell for all their work.

Finally, we hope graduate students and researchers new to the field will find the volume helpful as a starting point to these fascinating areas of such great importance for understanding the workings of the Earth System and realms beyond.

Daniel R. Neuville, Paris
Grant S. Henderson, Toronto
Donald B. Dingwell, Munich

Table of Contents