Geochemical Modeling of the Mantle Partial Melting using Heuristic Exploration: An Optimization Model Applied to Earth Sciences

Abstract

Abstract An evolution strategy-type heuristic simulation tool was developed to optimize the mantle partial melting inverse modeling. An objective or fitness function was derived from the batch equation to model the source composition and the partial melting degree from the chemistry of near primary liquids. In the search algorithm structure was considered: (a) the geochemical system constraints, (b) an initialization step, and (c) a procedure of mutation and heuristic individual selection. The heuristic simulation was successfully applied in four study cases, as mineralogical and rare earth element (REE) composition of known peridotitic sources. Partial melting conditions were reproduced with a deviation ≤ 10−6 in a reasonably practical time (∼ 2 hours) by using a desktop computer.