Andrade rheology in time-domain. Application to Enceladus' dissipation of energy due to forced libration

Abstract

The main purpose of this work is to present a time-domain implementation of the Andrade rheology, instead of the traditional expansion in terms of a Fourier series of the tidal potential. This approach can be used in any fully three dimensional numerical simulation of the dynamics of a system of many deformable bodies. In particular, it allows large eccentricities, large mutual inclinations, and it is not limited to quasi-periodic perturbations. It can take into account an extended class of perturbations, such as chaotic motions, transient events, and resonant librations. The results are presented by means of a concrete application: the analysis of the libration of Enceladus. This is done by means of both analytic formulas in the frequency domain and direct numerical simulations. We do not a priori assume that Enceladus has a triaxial shape, the eventual triaxiality is a consequence of the satellite motion and its rheology. As a result we obtain an analytic formula for the amplitude of libration that incorporates a new correction due to the rheology. Our results provide an estimation of the amplitude of libration of the core of Enceladus as 0.6% of that of the shell. They also reproduce the observed 10 GW of tidal heat generated by Enceladus with a value of $0.17\times 10^{14}$Pa$\cdot$s for the global effective viscosity under both Maxwell and Andrade rheology.

Preprint 'elsart' style, 22 pages, 9 multiple figures. Accepted for publication in Icarus