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Introduction to the Physics of the Earth's Interior describes the structure, composition and temperature of the deep Earth in one comprehensive volume. The book begins with a succinct review of the fundamentals of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics of solids, and presents the theory of lattice vibration in solids. It introduces the various equations of state, moving on to a discussion of melting laws and transport properties. The book closes with a discussion of current seismological, thermal and compositional models of the Earth. The new edition of this successful textbook has been enlarged and fully updated, taking into account the considerable experimental and theoretical progress recently made in understanding the inner structure of the Earth. Like the first edition, this will be a useful textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in geophysics and mineralogy. It will also be of great value to researchers in earth sciences, physics and materials sciences.

This textbook describes the physics of the plastic deformation of solids at high temperatures. It is directed at geologists or geophysicists interested in the high-temperature behaviour of crystals who wish to become acquainted with the methods of materials science in so far as they are useful to earth scientists. It explains the most important models and recent experimental results without losing the reader in the primary literature of materials science. In turn the book deals with the essential solid-state physics; thermodynamics and hydrostatics of creep; creep models and their applications in the geological sciences; diffusion creep; superplastic deformation and deformation enhanced by phase transformations. Five concluding chapters give experimental results for metals, ceramics and minerals. There are extensive bibliographies to aid further study.

The effect of hydrostatic pressure on deformation is of secondary interest in materials science but it is very important in geophysics, as the hot silicate Earth's mantle extends down to depths where the hydrostatic pressure reaches values higher than 1 Mbar. The structure and composition of the Earth are summarily presented according to the latest models, and it is shown that the possibility of creep, hence convection in the lower mantle, is directly linked to the variation of the activation volume with pressure. The effect of pressure on mechanical properties, either diffusion-or glide-controlled, is shown, in most cases, to be a manifestation of the anharmonicity of the crystals . It can be expressed in terms of the variation of the elastic constants with pressure. The effect is small in the case of athermal processes but may be large for the thermally activated processes, for which the energy barrier can be elastically modelled. Another indirect effect has its source in the dependence on pressure of the diffusivity of impurities (such as water-related species in quartz). Elastic models for the activation volume of creep are reviewed and applied to the Earth's lower mantle. Generalities: high-pressure deformation and geodynamics The effect of hydrostatic pressure P on the flow stress or creep-rate of non-porous materials is much less important than the effect of temperature: indeed, for values of P currently obtained in the laboratory (a few tens of kilobars), there is only a second-order difference between the creep-rate under pressure and at one atmosphere pressure.