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Salt playas with their tessellated surface of polygonal salt ridges arebeautiful and intriguing, but the scientific community lacks a realistic andphysically meaningful model that thoroughly explains their formation. In thiswork, we investigated the formation phenomena via suitable three-dimensionalmodelling and simulation of the dynamical processes that are responsible. Weemployed fracture mechanics, principles of energy minimization, fluid and masstransport in fracture channels and processes of crystallization and selforganisation to finally replicate the almost Voronoidal pattern of salt ridgesthat tessellate salt playas. The model is applicable to playas having differentsalt compositions, as the effect of the salt diffusion coefficient and criticalsalinity at supersaturation for a particular ambient condition are factored in.The model closely reproduces the height distribution and geometry of the saltridges reported in the literature. Further, we prove that the final stablepolygonal geometry of the salt playas is an effort towards the totalminimization of system energy.

Three-dimensional modelling of polygonal ridges in salt playas