On the relation between Moho and sub-crustal stress induced by mantle convection

摘要

The sub-crustal stress components due to mantle convection have a direct relation with the spherical harmonic coefficients of the Earth's disturbing potential like those of the Moho model, developed by the Vening-Meinesz-Moritz theory. In this paper, the relation between the stress components and the global and local models of Moho is mathematically developed in three different ways. Here, we present the S function (S) with a numerical differentiation approach to generate the stress components and we show that its spherical harmonic series is convergent to a degree of about 600 based on a mean global Moho depth of 23 km. An integral approach is developed for integration of a local Moho model for the stress recovery, but the kernels of this integral are not likely to be convergent and should be generated by their spectral forms to a limited degree. Another method is developed based on integral inversion, which is free of any mathematical problem and suitable for recovering S from an existing model of Moho. Our numerical presentation shows that the stress has a good agreement with the tectonic boundaries and the places at which the curvature of the Moho surface changes.