Enceladus' Tiger Stripes As Frictional Faults: Effect On Stress And Heat Production

We propose a new model of Enceladus' tiger stripes in which the ice shell is modeled as an elastic system with Coulomb-type frictional interfaces subjected to periodic tidal loading. We find that the diurnal tides produce a complex pattern of stress anomalies, characterized by a length scale of tens of km and the peak values exceeding 100 kPa. Friction delays the response of the system to tidal loading and leads to an asymmetry between the compression and extension phases. This asymmetry results in additional stress, constant in time and comparable in magnitude to the cyclic stress. This static stress field is characterized by compression in the direction perpendicular to the faults and may influence the evolution of the south polar region on geological time scales. The total heat flow generated by friction is 0.1-1 GW, accounting for only a small fraction of the heat power emitted from the tiger stripes.