[CIG-MC] seek comments on the rolling 5 year CIG strategic plan (mantle convection part)

[Shijie Zhong]

Hi all,

The SSC is putting together the rolling 5-year CIG Strategic Plan for NSF. I have talked to some people at the Gordon conference last week on the mantle convection part. Here I list a number of key points that are likely to be in the Strategic plan (mantle convection). You are welcome to comment on them or to add your own points. Thanks in advance.

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Accomplishments in the last year (from July of 2006):

General: Eh Tan joined the CIG staff in July of 2006 and helped with a number of mantle convection related projects. Eh traveled to University of Colorado at Boulder to work with me on getting the geoid and Arizona State University to work with Allen McNamara on getting tracers to CIG's version of CitcomS. Eh traveled to University of Michigan to work with Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni and Lars Stixrude to explore the possibility to include their thermodynamics codes in CIG's software repository and mantle convection codes. Eh also traveled to a number of workshops and conferences to introduce CIG's codes. 

In the meantime, the compressible mantle convection working group continues to work on various aspects of compressible mantle convection problems. The group (Eh Tan, Scott King's group, Peter van Keken's group, Louis Moresi's group, and my group) presented a poster at the 2007 Fall AGU meeting. Eh continues to work to get the compressible convection to work in CitcomS. Now Eh is performing benchmark calculations against propagator matrix solutions for the Stokes flow problems provided by Mr. Wei Leng, a graduate student from University of Colorado. 

The working group for analytic solutions code (Thorsten Becker, Bernhard Steinberger, Rick O'Connell, and Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni) continues to work and put their codes to the CIG's software repository. Becker and Steinberger contributed their code HC in the repository already. They also performed benchmark studies using their HC code against CitcomS code and obtained satisfactory agreement.

So here is the summary:
1) Release of CitcomS with the geoid calculations.
2) Release of CitcomS with tracers for mixing/thermochemical modeling.
3) Continued to work on compressible mantle convection. Finished coding of compressible convection in CitcomS and performed preliminary benchmarks.
4) Release of HC code with benchmarks.
5) Explored the possibility to include realistic thermodynamics codes into CIG's mantle convection codes.
6) Added more options for boundary conditions to CitcomCU.
7) Provided tutorials at various conferences/workshops.

Future goals:

1) Finish and release CitcomS with compressible convection in the summer of 2007. Explore the possibility to include realistic thermodynamics formulation. 
2) Include compressible convection and geoid calculations in the HC code. 
3) Have a mantle convection/lithospheric dynamics workshop in the summer of 2008.
4) Start to develop a mantle convection code with adapative mesh refinement capabilities, which is one of the important goals identified at the Boulder workshop in 2005. 

Goals 1 and 2 are for relatively short term and we are quite confident to complete them. 

Goal 3 on the workshop clearly needs more discussions including workshop format and objectives (e.g., student training on numerical methods, and real workshop rather than just another meeting?). 

As you can see, after this summer's expected release of compressible CitcomS, there will be no significant developments on existing codes. The emphasis will be on a new code that can do adapative mesh refinement. Given the different data structure that is needed for the adapative mesh refinement, the SSC felt that it is better to depart from existing codes. Another important aspect is that meshing parts and possibly certain solver parts as well are to be shared between short-term tectonics, long-term tectonics, magma dynamics, and seismic wave propagation codes, i.e., covering the whole geophysics spectra. 

Your comments are appreciated.

Shijie



Shijie Zhong
Department of Physics
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309
Tel: 303-735-5095; Fax: 303-492-7935
Web: http://anquetil.colorado.edu/szhong