Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 312, 360–370 (2011)

As an oceanic plate descends into the mantle beneath another plate, the subducting slab can bend and buckle. Numerical modelling of subduction shows that buckling in the mantle influences tectonic motions of the plates at the surface.

Changyeol Lee and Scott King of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University simulated slab subduction in two-dimensional numerical experiments. Buckling of the subducted oceanic slab is expressed as the alternating shallowing and steepening of the plate's dip angle as it gradually folds into a concertina in the mantle. The results show that when the plates at the surface converge rapidly the slab subducts at a shallow angle. But when the subducting plate buckles backwards — moving at a steep angle — the rate of convergence between the plates at the surface decreases.

Repeated buckling of subducted slabs over time could explain the different compressional and extensional tectonic features observed at the surface, as well as the varied angles of dip of the slabs observed in subduction zones around the world.