The Blankenbach convection benchmark#
This folder allows running the benchmark cases 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, and 2b from Blankenbach et al. [1989]:
Blankenbach, B., et al. “A benchmark comparison for mantle convection codes.” Geophysical Journal International 98.1 (1989): 23-38.
The reference values (given in reference_statistics.txt) are
from that paper (see Table 9). After building the plugin in the plugin/ subfolder
and running the benchmarks by executing the script run_all_models.sh, you can
use the python script get_statistics.py to analyze and plot the results.
Please note that these computations take a long time to reach steady state,
especially on finer meshes, consider adjusting the number of parallel
processes and the choice of refinement levels in run_all_models.sh
and use ASPECT’s optimized mode
(see Debug vs. optimized mode).
The reference output for this benchmark is stored in statistics.txt and shown in Fig. 164.
Fig. 164 Convergence of the Blankenbach benchmark cases. Left panel: Nusselt number over cell size h. Right panel: Relative error over cell size. Gray lines indicate the reference values from Blankenbach et al. [1989] (left panel) and theoretical convergence predicted for different convergence orders (right panel). Dashed lines show a simple heat flux computed as the gradient of temperature, solid lines show the heat flux computed using a consistent boundary flux method.#
Case |
Resolution |
#Timesteps |
|---|---|---|
1a |
3 |
72 |
1a |
4 |
128 |
1a |
5 |
232 |
1a |
6 |
470 |
1a |
7 |
939 |
1b |
3 |
210 |
1b |
4 |
347 |
1b |
5 |
690 |
1b |
6 |
1368 |
1b |
7 |
2745 |
1c |
3 |
830 |
1c |
4 |
1916 |
1c |
5 |
3397 |
1c |
6 |
6728 |
1c |
7 |
13445 |
2a |
3 |
1857 |
2a |
4 |
3088 |
2a |
5 |
6638 |
2a |
6 |
13593 |
2a |
7 |
27244 |
2b |
3 |
4076 |
2b |
4 |
8404 |
2b |
5 |
17034 |
2b |
6 |
34164 |
2b |
7 |
68363 |