  Salt playas with their tessellated surface of polygonal salt ridges are
beautiful and intriguing, but the scientific community lacks a realistic and
physically meaningful model that thoroughly explains their formation. In this
work, we investigated the formation phenomena via suitable three-dimensional
modelling and simulation of the dynamical processes that are responsible. We
employed fracture mechanics, principles of energy minimization, fluid and mass
transport in fracture channels and processes of crystallization and self
organisation to finally replicate the almost Voronoidal pattern of salt ridges
that tessellate salt playas. The model is applicable to playas having different
salt compositions, as the effect of the salt diffusion coefficient and critical
salinity at supersaturation for a particular ambient condition are factored in.
The model closely reproduces the height distribution and geometry of the salt
ridges reported in the literature. Further, we prove that the final stable
polygonal geometry of the salt playas is an effort towards the total
minimization of system energy.
