Effects of anisotropic viscosity and texture development on convection in ice mantles

[1] Convection may occur in the ice shells of satellites in the outer solar system. The style of convection, rate of heat transport, and resulting surface features depend on the rheology of ice, which in turn depends on temperature, grain size, stress, and crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO). Here we study the effect of CPO development and anisotropic viscosity on convection by coupling a model of polycrystalline ice deformation with a macroscopic flow model. Despite having a first-order effect on velocities and heat transport in a convecting ice shell, fabric development is unlikely to be observable either directly by spacecraft-based radar or indirectly based on changes in the wavelength or amplitude of dynamic topography.