Paul Bremner (ST13) attended a two-week code hackathon to add features and capabilities to ASPECT (https://aspect.geodynamics.org/), an open source geodynamic software that simulates convection in planetary interiors, 7/6-7/16. The annual hackathon was hosted by the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG, https://geodynamics.org/cig/). Participants from across Europe and the US attended.
This year, Bremner joined colleagues to improve the calculation of gravity and the geoid at the planetary surface providing a more robust simulation output to compare against satellite observations. In addition, work is being done to provide an improved interface to read-in unstructured files of petrologic properties (e.g., density and seismic velocities at given a pressure and temperature), and to calculate and track composite materials and their associated composite properties. Additional changes include additional treatments of rheology, viscosity post-processing, particle tracking, advanced solver-schemes, and documentation.