Seamount loading of a compressible viscoelastic plate: An analytical solution

Analytical solutions are presented for the surface loading of a compressible plate with a arbitrary Poisson's ratio. In problems of seamount loading of oceanic lithosphere the compressibility is important only for young loads, of age about 3 times less than the effective relaxation time. In these case the usual assumption of an incompressible layer leads to an overestimation of the effective flexural rigidity of the lithosphere.