Poro-viscoelastic tidal heating of Io

Io’s tidally driven global volcanism indicates widespread partial melting in its mantle. How this melt participates in the interior dynamics and, in particular, the role it plays in tidal dissipation, is poorly understood. We model Io’s tidal deformation by treating its mantle as a two-phase (solid and melt) system. By combining poro-viscous and poro-elastic compaction theories in a Maxwell framework with a consistent model of tidal and self-gravitation, we produce the first self-consistent evaluation of Io’s tidal heating rate due to shearing, compaction and Darcy flow. We find that Darcy dissipation can potentially exceed shear heating, but only for large (0.05–0.2) melt fractions, and if the grain size is large or melt viscosity ultra-low. Since grain sizes larger than 1 cm are unlikely, this suggests that Darcy dissipation is secondary to shear dissipation. Compaction dissipation is maximized when the asthenosphere is highly resistive to isotropic stresses, but contributes at most 1% of Io’s observed heating rate. This work represents a crucial step toward a self-consistent quantitative theory for the dynamics of Io’s partially molten interior.