Transient Effects Revisited
Today I had a chance to check out the book "Fundamentals of basin and petroleum systems modeling" by Thomas Hantschel and Armin Kauerauf (Springer-Verlag, 2009). It seems that the transient effects may be still fundamentally misunderstood (and underestimated). Their fig. 3.4a on page 109 (shown below) shows a 1D model going through the deposition, hiatus, and erosion stages. With the assumption that the heat flow at the base of the sediment stays constant at 60 mW/m 2 , the model predicts small (�5 mW/m 2 ) changes in heat flow in the sediment column. The authors conclude that the transient effect is smaller than that caused by radioactivity within the sediments. You may click on the image to see a version with better resolution. When evaluating transient effects, it may not be appropriate to assume constant heat flow at base sediments. You can see from the figure that the forced base boundary is limiting the extent of the transient effects. With a deeper boun...