Changes of the magnetic susceptibility and its anisotropy of basalts by oxidation of titanomagnetites

Summary The changes of the anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility of alkaline Tertiary basalts under titanomagnetite oxidation are investigated. The oxidation of the titanomagnetites was achieved by the following thermal processing of rock samples: 60 mins at a temperature of 400°C, 300 mins at T=400°C and 60 mins at T=500°C. It is shown that considerable changes of the values of the magnetic susceptibility, as well as of the degree of the preferred orientation of the titanomagnetites and of the ellipsoid of anisotropy in the sample occur as a result of the oxidation of titanomagnetites, contained in the samples, due to the said thermal processing. Moreover, the micro-structure of the grains, created by the oxidation of the titanomagnetites, causes the mostly linearly parallel configuration to change to a planar-parallel configuration.