[CIG-ALL] ASPECT 2.1.0 released

[Rene Gassmoeller]

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.1.0. ASPECT is the 
Advanced
Solver for Problems in Earth’s ConvecTion. It uses modern numerical 
methods such
as adaptive mesh refinement, multigrid, and a modular software design to
provide a fast, flexible, and extensible mantle convection solver. ASPECT is
available from

https://aspect.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

https://geodynamics.org/cig/software/aspect/

and

https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.1.0

This release includes the following significant changes:

  * New: ASPECT has a new plugin system that allows to prescribe a fixed
    heat flux (instead of prescribing the temperature) at the model
    boundaries.
  * New: Compositional fields can optionally be advected with the melt
    velocity.
  * New: There is now a visualization postprocessor that outputs the
    compaction
    length, the characteristic length scale of melt transport.
  * New: ASPECT can optionally use the Geodynamic World Builder
    (https://github.com/GeodynamicWorldBuilder/WorldBuilder/) to create
    complex
    initial conditions for temperature and composition.
  * New: ASPECT can now read in a depth-dependent vs to density
    conversion file, which
    can be used with the included tomography model plugins.
  * New: ASPECT can now read in a depth-dependent initial temperature
    from file.
  * New: The ‘ascii data’ and ‘function’ boundary velocity plugins now allow
    velocities to be specified along spherical (up, east, north) unit
    vectors.
  * New: Added a visualization plugin that directly outputs the strain
    rate tensor.
  * New: ASPECT can now call PerpleX to calculate material properties, phase
    amounts and compositions on-the-fly. This model is provided as a
    proof-of-concept; more efficient procedures are required for
    production runs.
  * New: ASPECT now outputs a dynamically generated URL based on used
    features to
    ask people to cite appropriate papers.
  * New: ASPECT has two visualization postprocessors which calculate and
    output
    the grain lag angle and the infinite strain axis (ISA) rotation
    timescale,
    respectively. These two quantities can be used to calculate the grain
    orientation lag parameter of Kaminski and Ribe (G3, 2002).
  * Improved: The artificial diffusion term that is added in the entropy
    viscosity method to the temperature and composition equations is now
    computed
    as the maximum of the physical diffusion and entropy viscosity
    instead of the
    sum. This reduces numerical diffusion for the temperature field.
  * New: Compositional fields can now be prescribed to a value that is
    computed
    in the material model as an additional output at every time step.
  * Changed: The heat flux through boundary cells is now computed using the
    consistent boundary flux method as described in Gresho, et al.
    (1987), which
    is much more accurate than the previously used method.
  * New: ASPECT can now calculate gravity anomalies in addition to the
    geoid.
  * New: ASPECT now outputs a file named original.prm in the output
    directory
    with the exact content of the parameter it got started with.
  * New: Added basic support for a volume-of-fluid interface tracking
    advection
    method in 2D incompressible box models. The VoF method is an
    efficient method
    to track a distinct compositional field without artificial diffusion.
  * New: There is now an option to output visualization data as higher order
    polynomials. This is an improvement in accuracy and requires less
    disk space
    than the ‘Interpolate output’ option that was available before.
    However the
    new output can only be read by ParaView version 5.5 and newer and is
    therefore disabled by default.
  * New: Several new benchmark cases were added.
  * Many other fixes and smaller improvements.

A complete list of changes and their contributing authors can be found at
https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_2_80_80_and_2_81_80.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister,
Jacqueline Austermann, Menno Fraters, Anne Glerum, John Naliboff,
and many other contributors.

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