Status:
Actively adding features to support improved science or performance by CIG.

## How to Cite

Bug reports:
Github Issue Tracker

# ASPECT

Finite element parallel code to simulate problems in thermal convection in both 2D and 3D models.

This release includes the following changes:

• New: Choice between different formulations for the governing equations including Boussinesq and anelastic liquid approximation.
• New: Melt transport (two-phase flow).
• Particles: new generators, ghost exchange, performance improvements, interpolation to fields.
• New: Nondimensional material model for incompressible (using the Boussinesq approximation) and compressible computations (with ALA or TALA) for nondimensionalized problems. This can be used for benchmark problems like Blankenbach, King, etc.
• New: Optional DG method for temperature/composition.
• Adiabatic conditions: rework, now includes a reference density profile.
• Free surface: overhaul.
• New cookbooks: continental extension, finite strain, BurnMan interface, active tracers.
• New benchmarks: Tan, Gurnis, Blankenbach, King.
• New: viscoplastic material model.
• Material model interface cleanup.
• Assembly performance improvements.
• New: memory statistics post-processor.
• New: initial topography plugins.
• Many other fixes and small improvements.
• A complete list of changes can be found at:

https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_84_80_and_1_85_80.html

## Current Release

### Source Packages

aspect-1.5.0.tar.gz [2017-02-28]

This release includes the following changes:

• New: Choice between different formulations for the governing equations including Boussinesq and anelastic liquid approximation.
• New: Melt transport (two-phase flow).
• Particles: new generators, ghost exchange, performance improvements, interpolation to fields.
• New: Nondimensional material model for incompressible (using the Boussinesq approximation) and compressible computations (with ALA or TALA) for nondimensionalized problems. This can be used for benchmark problems like Blankenbach, King, etc..
• New: Optional DG method for temperature/composition.
• Adiabatic conditions: rework, now includes a reference density profile.
• Free surface: overhaul.
• New cookbooks: continental extension, finite strain, BurnMan interface, active tracers.
• New benchmarks: TanGurnis, Blankenbach, King.
• New: viscoplastic material model.
• Material model interface cleanup.
• Assembly performance improvements.
• New: memory statistics postprocessor.
• New: initial topography plugins.
• Many other fixes and small improvements.

A complete list of changes can be found at https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_84_80_and_1_85_80.html

### View Prior Source Releases

[show] [hide]

aspect-1.4.0.tar.gz [2016-05-15]

This release includes the following changes:

• Complete overhaul of the particle architecture.
• Modularization of the assembly process.
• Large improvements to serial and parallel performance of particle handling.
• Support for traction boundary conditions.
• Support for time-dependent mesh refinement criteria.
• Flexible support for modifying the underlying FEM variables for the PDE.
• Optional DG support for temperature and compositional fields.
• More robust parallel file I/O.
• Support for tangential mesh velocity boundaries in free surface computations.
• Support for anisotropic viscosity.
• Various fixes to free surface computations: checkpointing, better stabilization, crash fixes.
• New Chunk Geometry model.
• New material property averaging options.
• Complete rewrite of the heating model infrastructure.
• Several new cookbooks.
• Several new postprocessors.
• Support for signals in various locations that allows plugins to inspect/manipulate things inside the core application.
• Several new mesh refinement plugins.
• Improved spherical interpolation of data used in the GPlates plugin.
• Many other fixes and small improvements.
A complete list of changes can be found at
https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_83_and_1_84_80.html
and the release is also available from
https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v1.4.0.

aspect-1.3.tar.gz [2015-05-18]

Changelist:

• New: Averaging of material properties between the quadrature points of a cell. This greatly increases the stability of solutions in simulations with spatially varying coefficients, and also greatly accelerates the solution, at times up to a factor of ten.
• Corrections to the entropy stabilization scheme for compositional fields.
• Fixed and extended: Removal of rigid body translations and rotations when the simulation has a nullspace.
• New: VTU visualization output can now be grouped into an arbitrary number of files per time step.
• Various fixes to the nonlinear solver residual computation.
• New visualization postprocessors that can output the shear stress and full stress tensors.
• Fixes to the latent heat formulation.
• New 'ascii data' plugins for boundary and initial conditions.
• New mass flux statistics postprocessor.
• Many other fixes and small improvements.
A complete list of changes can be found at https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_82_and_1_83.html

aspect-1.2.tar.gz [2015-01-26]

Changelist:

• methods to have truly concentric shells without distorted cells
• linear solver improvements which give up to 2x speedup in some cases
• boundary names like "top" instead of numbers are now supported in input files
• new example: free surface computation with a crust as a stagnant lid
• new benchmarks: Davies et al. and Burstedde et al.
• new initial condition: S40RTS perturbation based on shear wave data
• fixes to minimum/maximum refinement plugins
• better error messages when linear solvers fail
• many other fixes and small improvements (direct solver, file output, checkpointing, etc.)
A complete list of changes can be found at https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_81_and_1_82.html

aspect-1.1.tar.gz [2014-06-01]

• Initial work on free surface in Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian framework
• New postprocessors, initial temperature profiles
• Improved PETSc support
• Bug fixes

aspect-1.0.tar.gz [2014-04-16]

This release contains a large number of changes, incorporating about one year of work of the main authors and many contributors:
- a lot of new documentation
- new examples (2d/3d shells, GPlates, ...)
- option to remove rotational/translational modes
- big performance improvements
- compositional fields: reactions, boundary conditions
- support for periodic meshes
- output of dynamic topography
- incorporation of latent heat
- experimental PETSc support

## User Resources

User Manual

The ASPECT user manual is available online.

Community Wiki

Visit the ASPECT Wiki page for additional support with building, using, or modifying ASPECT.

ASPECT Publications List

Research publications using ASPECT.

Mailing List

Browse the CIG Mantle Convection Mailing List Archive to find known issues or to troubleshoot common problems, or E-mail the CIG Mantle Convection Mailing List with details of your problem or suggestion.

Browse the CIG Aspect Development Mailing List Archive to find known issues or to troubleshoot common problems, or E-mail the CIG Aspect Development Mailing List with details of your problem or suggestion.

## Developer Resources

Development Version

If you are interested in getting the development version of this code from the CIG repository, use the following git command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect.git

You can also browse the history of modifications in the Git repository.

Issue/Bug Tracker on Github

Browse and/or submit new issues at our Github Issues Tracker.

Doxygen Documentation

Auto-generated Doxygen documentation is available for the Development and Release codebases.

## ASPECT Users Map

Shows location of all users who downloaded ASPECT in the past year (image updated daily.)

This image was generated using GMT: The Generic Mapping Tools which is released under the GNU LGPL3+. Location data is based on MaxMind's GeoLite database which is released under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0.