HR: 0800h
AN: SF41A-0759    [Abstracts]
TI: Addressing Multi-Scale Problems in Geophysics With Coupled Modeling Tools: Current Development Status of the Lithomop Deformation Modeling Code Within the Pyre Framework
AU: * Williams, C A
EM: willic3@rpi.edu
AF: Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Science Center, 2C01B, Troy, NY 12180 United States
AU: Aagaard, B
EM: baagaard@usgs.gov
AF: U. S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AU: Aivazis, M
EM: aivazis@caltech.edu
AF: Center for Advanced Computing Research, California Institute of Technology, M/C 158-79, Pasadena, CA 91125 United States
AU: Simons, M
EM: simons@caltech.edu
AF: Seismo Lab, California Institute of Technology, M/C 252-21, Pasadena, CA 91125 United States
AB: Many fundamental problems in geophysics may be viewed as the interaction of phenomena that occur on different temporal and spatial scales. As an example, the occurrence of multiple earthquakes in a tectonically active region could be characterized in terms of at least three distinct scales: 1) The contribution to the regional stress field in the lithosphere from mantle convection (dynamic computations on large temporal and spatial scales). 2) Interseismic stress buildup and postseismic stress relaxation in the lithosphere (quasi-static computations on intermediate temporal and spatial scales). 3) Coseismic stress changes (dynamic computations on short time scales and small to intermediate spatial scales). In the past, the tendency has been to focus on one of the scales pertinent to the problem, and approximate the effects due to the other scales. With increasingly powerful computational abilities, however, it is now becoming more feasible to address the entire scope of these complex problems. We describe here the current development status of Lithomop -- a quasi-static finite element code for modeling deformation in the solid earth. This code, which was developed from a version of the finite element code TECTON, is being integrated into the Pyre framework as one member of a suite of geophysical modeling tools being assembled by the GeoFramework project. One important facility provided by the Pyre framework is the ability to couple different codes, which will allow the simulation of complex multi-scale problems. Recent improvements to Lithomop include the addition of 8 new element types, better integration within the Pyre framework, a new modular approach to defining material models, and a number of efficiency improvements. When completed, Lithomop will be fully parallelized, will have several flexible mechanisms for importing and exporting data, will include real-time visualization capabilities, and will be able to couple with several other codes in the framework.
UR: http://www.geoframework.org
DE: 8194 Instruments and techniques
DE: 8120 Dynamics of lithosphere and mantle--general
DE: 8159 Rheology--crust and lithosphere
DE: 3210 Modeling
DE: 3230 Numerical solutions
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting