[CIG-LONG] New user working on crustal modelling

[Walter Landry]

Lester Anderson <lester_anderson1963 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all
> 
> I am a new researcher looking at large-scale crustal modelling of
> East Antarctica. I still have to fully read into all the
> possibilities of GALE, but I would like to know if it is possible to
> simulate flexural loading mechanisms with or without extension?

Flexural loading is not implemented in Gale, and it would take some effort
to implement.

> At the moment I am looking at modelling the gravity
> data to derive a simple structure, but ideally what I would like to do is
> build in some rheological constraints through test models in GALE.
> 
> I have installed the Windows version of GALE which is stable as far as I can
> tell. For speed I assume that working on a simple 2D GALE model would be
> considerably less CPU intensive compared to a full 3D one, but I guess there
> is also the effect of the mesh resolution to consider.

You can often run 2D models on a single workstation.  For high
fidelity runs, you will probably have to run on a parallel machine.
That has been done and seems to work fine.

For any serious 3D modeling, you will have to use a parallel machine.
For purely viscous models, it should work well.  For models with
yielding rheologies, Gale's ability to scale is still unknown.

Cheers,
Walter Landry
walter at geodynamics.org