[CIG-MC] ASPECT 1.4.0 released

[Timo Heister]

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 1.4.0. 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.dealii.org/

and the release is available from

        https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v1.4.0

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

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.


-- 
Timo Heister
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~heister/