Rene Gassmoeller, CSU Fort Collins

Particle-in-cell methods have a long history in modeling of mantle convection, lithospheric deformation and crustal dynamics. However, their efficient parallel implementation and application in models - in particular combined with adaptive meshes - is involved due to the complex reassignment of particles to cells and frequent parallel communication.

In this webinar, I present the implementation of a flexible, scalable and efficient particle-in-cell method for the massively parallel finite-element code ASPECT. I discuss the complexity of the implemented algorithms, present scaling tests and discuss load-balancing strategies like balanced repartitioning for particles in adaptive meshes with their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, I will show an application tutorial on how to convert a model with compositional fields into one using the particle advection scheme, and which consequences follow from this conversion for model runtime and accuracy.

[All 2016-17 webinars] [YouTube]

1. Gassmoeller
2. webinar
3. 2016