Mantle Convection Modelling Tools

Mantle Convection/Plate Tectonic Modeling Tools

This material is undergoing change as we re-engineer our software. As this takes plate please visit the site for our NSF funded ITR project, GeoFramework or the new site for downloading open source geodynamics software GeoFramework.org.

The great difficulty in understanding how the solid Earth system works is the incorporation of the wide di screpency in effecitive viscosity between the mantle and lithosphere. In order to resolve these wide differences in material properties we use finite element methods. Currently, we are using two different codes, ConMan, originally written by Purdue University Professor Scott King while he was a graduate student in the Seismological Laboratory and CITCoM, written in house by Louis Moresi. Louis is now at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization where he currently maintains a new page for the software. ConMan has been modified such that time-dependent faults can evolve with the flow in a dynamically self consistent fashion. Shijie Zhong , who has since moved to the University of Colorado, has modified the CitCom software for parallel computers and incoporated the fault algorithm into a 3-D version of the software; we have a manual in the pdf format. Extensive motifications have been made to the finite elment codes such that normal stress can be computed directly on the top boundary using a Consistent Boundary Flux (CBF) method. Accurate calculation of the normal stress is essential for well resolved calculation of dynamic topography, the geoid and gravity.