Effective elastic thickness ($T_e$)

The effective elastic thickness is the thickness of a homogeneous elastic plate with the same effective bending stiffness as the loaded lithosphere. In an isotropic thin-plate model, $D=E{T}_e^3/[12(1-{\nu }^2)]$, with Young's modulus $E$ and Poisson's ratio $\nu$. It depends on thermal state, material creep, loading history and yielding, and is not generally the crust's thickness or the full thermal thickness.