Release Tasklist#

Leading up to a release#

  • send out an email about problems or outstanding patches

  • go through the list of TODOs in the source code and see what can be done

  • make sure the description of the interfaces that need to be updated are up to date in the manual

  • update the used deal.II version for the Docker container in contrib/docker/docker/Dockerfile and in the manual

  • check that README.md and https://aspect.geodynamics.org/ is up-to-date and the links are working

  • run (and be patient):

    cd benchmarks && make -f check.mk BUILD=$BUILDDIR -j4
cd cookbooks && make -f check.mk BUILD=$BUILDDIR -j4

  • determine new version roughly following semantic versioning: http://semver.org/

    • format is X.Y.Z for a release, X.Y.Z-pre for the dev version or X.Y.Z-rcW for release candidates

    • backwards incompatible changes require incrementing X, adding features incrementing Y

  • setup:

    export OLDVER=2.0.0
export VER=2.1.0
export VERSHORT=2.1
export NEXTVER=2.2.0-pre
# Make sure DEALSRCDIR is set to correct path
export DEALSRCDIR=$DEAL_II_DIR

  • fix doxygen errors:

    find include -name "*h" -print | xargs -n 1 $DEALSRCDIR/contrib/utilities/checkdoxygen.py

    and commit.

  • manual, check for missing labels:

    cd doc
make manual.pdf
grep undefined manual/manual.log    # try to fix some
make aspect.tag

    and check for warnings

  • fix formatting, copyright years:

    find . -name "*.h" -print | while read file;do $DEALSRCDIR/contrib/utilities/wrapcomments.py $file >temp;mv temp $file;done

  • note: we started ignoring the rewrapping of comments, but we should still fix wrong indentation or other problems

    ./contrib/utilities/indent
./contrib/release/update_copyright.sh
git commit -a -m "doxygen formatting, comment wrapping"

Create a pull-request#

  • create branch for main PR to update changes.h in doc/modules:

    git checkout -b post-release-$VER
cd doc/modules; rm -f changes/*~; ./increment_version.sh $OLDVER $VER;cd ../..
cd contrib/release;./bump_version.sh $NEXTVER; cd ..
git commit -m "release task: update version and changes.h"

  • create a branch, bump version (note, make sure the PR above is included):

    git checkout post-release-$VER && \
git checkout -b aspect-$VERSHORT && \
cd contrib/release && ./bump_version.sh $VER && cd ../.. && \
git commit -m "release task: update version info"

  • compile aspect, make sure you have a symlink in the main directory for the next step

    • make sure the WorldBuilder is using the included version

  • update doc/manual/parameters.tex and documentation:

    cd doc && ./update_parameters.sh && make manual.pdf && cp manual.pdf manual-$VER.pdf && cd .. && \
git add doc/manual/parameters.tex && \
git commit -m "release task: update manual"

  • Tag a release candidate (RC):

    export TAG=$VER-rc1
cd contrib/release && ./bump_version.sh $TAG && cd ../.. && \
git commit -m "version $TAG" && \
git tag -s v$TAG -m "version $TAG"

  • Tag the release:

    export TAG=$VER
cd contrib/release && ./bump_version.sh $TAG && cd ../.. && \
git commit -m "version $TAG" && \
git tag -s v$TAG -m "version $TAG"

  • create a tar file:

    cd doc && make manual.pdf && cp manual.pdf ../aspect-manual-$TAG.pdf && cd ..
export PREFIX=aspect-$TAG && rm -rf $PREFIX.tar.gz && \
git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=$PREFIX/ HEAD >temp.tar.gz && \
rm -fr $PREFIX/ && \
tar xf temp.tar.gz && \
cd contrib/WorldBuilder/ && \
git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=$PREFIX/contrib/WorldBuilder/ HEAD >temp.tar.gz && \
cd ../.. && \
tar xf contrib/WorldBuilder/temp.tar.gz && \
tar czf $PREFIX.tar.gz $PREFIX/ && \
rm -rf contrib/WorldBuilder/temp.tar.gz

  • final testing by extracting tarball, compiling, and running:

    tar xf $PREFIX.tar.gz
cd $PREFIX
docker run --rm -it -v `pwd`:/home/dealii/aspect \
      tjhei/dealii:v9.2.0-full-v9.2.0-r2-gcc5 /bin/bash

mkdir build; cd build
cmake -G "Ninja" -D ASPECT_RUN_ALL_TESTS=ON ~/aspect
ninja
ctest -j 8 -V

  • make public (branch and tag):

    git push upstream aspect-$VERSHORT
git push upstream v$TAG

  • sign:

    gpg --detach-sign --armor aspect-$TAG.tar.gz
gpg --detach-sign --armor aspect-manual-$TAG.pdf
sha1sum aspect-$TAG.tar.gz aspect-manual-$TAG.pdf >sha1sum-$TAG.txt

  • create a release on github, upload .tar.gz and manual-$VER.pdf

  • update website (www branch):

    • header.include: add link to changes

    • index.html: add news entry

    • cite.html: change to current version (2x)

  • create zenodo release for source code:

    • https://zenodo.org/deposit?page=1&size=20

    • title: ASPECT v2.0.0

    • license: GPL 2

    • check CIG comments: https://github.com/geodynamics/best_practices/blob/master/ZenodoBestPractices.md

    • cig community!

    • update zenodo badge in README.md to newest version (see badge button on the right of zenodo page)

    • add zenodo badge also to the release on github (on top, see 2.0.1 for an example)

    • readme / release notes: add zenodo DOI button

    • manual/manual.bib: add new zenodo entry . create figshare DOI for manual (just upload a new version as the same entry)

    • update manual/manual.bib entry . update doc/manual/manual.bib with src and manual doi . update aspect.geodynamics.org/cite.html and citing.html in www repo:

    • add new version in citing.html, search for “<option”

    • doc/make_cite_html.py:

      • add new version, update doc/zenodo dois

    • run aspect/doc/ python3 make_cite_html.py add to www . update http://geodynamics.org/cig/software/aspect/: update current release number create entry for the new release update the list of contributors … . update docker image geodynamics/aspect:

    • modify contrib/docker/docker/Dockerfile and contrib/docker/docker/build.sh to checkout the release cd contrib/docker/docker && ./build.sh docker push geodynamics/aspect:v$TAG . update the spack installation package with the latest tarball, see https://github.com/spack/spack/pull/13830 for an example . announce on cig-all@geodynamics.org https://community.geodynamics.org/c/aspect dealii@googlegroups.com

Announcement for 2.4.0 (July 25, 2022)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.4.0. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth’s ConvecTion. It uses modern numerical methods such as adaptive mesh refinement, multigrid solvers, and a modular software design to provide a fast, flexible, and extensible mantle convection solver. ASPECT is available from

               https://aspect.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

    https://geodynamics.org/resources/aspect

and

    https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.4.0

Among others this release includes the following significant changes:

  • New: ASPECT now requires deal.II 9.3.0 or newer, and cmake 3.1.0 or newer. (Timo Heister)

  • New: The matrix-free GMG Stokes solver now works for problems with free-surface boundaries and elasticity. (Jiaqi Zhang, Anne Glerum, Timo Heister, John Naliboff)

  • New: The matrix-free GMG Stokes preconditioner is now implemented for the Newton solver. (Timo Heister, Menno Fraters, Jiaqi Zhang)

  • New: Visualization postprocessors now record the physical units of the quantity they compute, and this information is also output into visualization files with a sufficiently new version of deal.II. (Wolfgang Bangerth)

  • New: Where possible, when using large data tables as input (e.g., for initial conditions specified as tables), these data are now stored only once on each node in memory areas that is accessible by all MPI processes on that node. (Wolfgang Bangerth)

  • New: There is now a new material model for melting in the lowermost mantle. It can be used to reproduce the results of Dannberg et al. (2021). (Juliane Dannberg)

  • New: The geoid postprocessor can now handle a deforming mesh, in addition to the already existing option from the dynamic topography postprocessor output. (Maaike Weerdesteijn, Rene Gassmoeller, Jacky Austermann)

  • New: There is now a ‘static’ option for the temperature field that is set-up similarly to the ‘static’ option for compositional fields. This allows the temperature field to be constant over time so you can still advect and build up elastic stresses. (Rebecca Fildes, Magali Billen)

  • Changed: The least squares particle interpolation plugins now provide a bound preserving slope limiter that respects local bounds on each cell. (Mack Gregory, Gerry Puckett, Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: Add an advection field method that advects a compositional field according to Darcy’s Law. (Daniel Douglas)

  • New: The material model ‘dynamic_friction’ has been integrated into a new rheology model friction_models that can be used together with the visco_plastic material model. (Esther Heckenbach)

  • New: ASPECT now has a ThermodynamicTableLookup equation of state plugin, which allows material models to read in one or more Perple_X or HeFESTo table files. (Bob Myhill)

  • Changed: The initial composition model called ‘ascii data’ can now read in 3d ascii datasets into a 2d model and slice the dataset in a user controlled plane. This allows it to make high-resolution 2d models of problems that use observational data (such as seismic tomography models). (Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: Added a new postprocessor which computes the parameter “Mobility” following Lourenco et al., 2020. (Elodie Kendall, Rene Gassmoeller, Anne Glerum and Bob Myhill)

  • Improved: Particle operations have been significantly accelerated, in particular in combination with a recent deal.II version (9.4.0 or newer). (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: Add a benchmark for load induced flexure with options for specifying sediment and rock material infilling the flexural moat. (Daniel Douglas)

  • New: ASPECT now has a cookbook that uses the gravity postprocessor to compute gravity generated by S40RTS-based mantle density variations. (Cedric Thieulot)

  • New: ASPECT now has a cookbook that shows how velocities can be prescribed at positions specified by an ASCII input file. (Bob Myhill)

  • New: There is now a cookbook of kinematically driven oceanic subduction in 2D with isoviscous materials and without temperature effects. The cookbook model setup is based on Quinquis (2014). (Anne Glerum)

  • New: There is now a cookbook that visualizes the phase diagram from results of a model run. This includes examples from the Visco-Plastic and Steinberger material model. (Haoyuan Li and Magali Billen)

  • New: There is now a cookbook that reproduces convection models with a phase function from Christensen and Yuen, 1985. (Juliane Dannberg)

  • Fixed: Many bugs, see link below for a complete list. (Many authors. Thank you!).

A complete list of all changes and their authors can be found at https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_2_83_80_and_2_84_80.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Menno Fraters, Rene Gassmoeller, Anne Glerum, Timo Heister, Bob Myhill, John Naliboff, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 2.3.0 (June 30, 2021)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.3.0. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth’s ConvecTion. It uses modern numerical methods such as adaptive mesh refinement, multigrid solvers, and a modular software design to provide a fast, flexible, and extensible mantle convection solver. ASPECT is available from

               https://aspect.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

    https://geodynamics.org/cig/software/aspect/

and

    https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.3.0

Among others this release includes the following significant changes:

  • New: ASPECT now requires deal.II 9.2.0 or newer. (Timo Heister)

  • New: ASPECT has a new, reproducible logo. (Rene Gassmoeller, Juliane Dannberg)

  • New: Mesh deformation now also works in combination with particles. Instead of the end of the timestep, particles are now advected before solving the compositional field advection equations. In iterative advection schemes, the particle location is restored before each iteration. (Anne Glerum, Rene Gassmoeller, Robert Citron)

  • New: ASPECT now supports the creation of visualization postprocessors that only output data on the surface of a model. An example is the “surface stress” visualization postprocessor. (Wolfgang Bangerth)

  • New: A new class TimeStepping::Manager to control time stepping with a plugin architecture has been added. The architecture allows to repeat time steps if the time step length changes significantly. (Timo Heister)

  • New: A mesh refinement plugin that allows to set regions of minimum and maximum refinement level between isosurfaces of solution variables. (Menno Fraters and Haoyuan Li)

  • New: There is a new nullspace removal option ‘net surface rotation’, which removes the net rotation of the surface. (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: Particle advection can now be used in combination with the repetition of timesteps. Before each repetition the particles are restored to their previous position. (Anne Glerum)

  • New: There is a new property in the depth average postprocessor that averages the mass of a compositional field (rather than its volume). (Juliane Dannberg)

  • New: The Drucker Prager rheology module now has an option to include a plastic damper, which acts to stabilize the plasticity formulation. At sufficient resolutions for a given plastic damper viscosity, the plastic shear band characteristics will be resolution independent. (John Naliboff and Cedric Thieulot)

  • New: ASPECT can now compute viscosity values depending on the values of phase functions for an arbitrary number of phases. (Haoyuan Li, 2020/08/06)

  • New: Added calculation for temperature-dependent strain healing in the strain dependent rheology module. (Erin Heilman)

  • New: Added new rheology module, which computes the temperature dependent Frank Kamenetskii viscosity approximation. (Erin Heilman)

  • New: ASPECT now includes a CompositeViscoPlastic rheology module. This rheology is an isostress composite of diffusion, dislocation and Peierls creep rheologies and optionally includes a damped Drucker-Prager plastic element. The rheology module for Peierls creep includes a formulation to compute the exact Peierls viscosity, using an internal Newton-Raphson iterative scheme. (Bob Myhill, John Naliboff and Magali Billen)

  • New: There is a new visualization postprocessor ‘principal stress’, which outputs the principal stress values and directions at every point in the model. (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: Added the functionality to compute averages in user defined depth layers (e.g. lithosphere, asthenosphere, transition zone, lower mantle) to the depth average postprocessor and the lateral averaging plugin. (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: The ‘spherical shell’ geometry model now supports periodic boundary conditions in polar angle direction for a 2D quarter shell (90 degree opening angle). (Kiran Chotalia, Timo Heister, Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: A new particle interpolator based on quadratic least squares has been added. (Mack Gregory, Gerry Puckett)

  • New: There is now a mesh deformation plugin “diffusion” that can be used to diffuse surface topography in box geometry models. (Anne Glerum)

  • Bug fixes to: Steinberger and Calderwood viscosity profile, particle generation, viscous strain weakening, incompressible equation of state, pressure sign convention, Neumann heat flow boundaries with the Newton solver, viscosity on the adiabat for extended Boussinesq approximation models, and many more. (many authors)

A complete list of all changes and their contributing authors can be found at https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_2_82_80_and_2_83_80.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Menno Fraters, Rene Gassmoeller, Anne Glerum, Timo Heister, Bob Myhill, John Naliboff, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 2.2.0 (June 30, 2020)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.2.0. 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.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

    https://geodynamics.org/cig/software/aspect/

and

    https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.2.0

This release includes the following significant changes:

  • New: There is a new matrix-free Stokes solver which uses geometric multigrid. This method is significantly faster than the default algebraic multigrid preconditioner and uses less memory. Free surface and melt transport are not yet implemented. (Thomas C. Clevenger, Timo Heister)

  • New: There is now a new approximation for the compressible convection models that is called ‘projected density field’. (Rene Gassmoeller, Juliane Dannberg, Timo Heister, Wolfgang Bangerth)

  • Changed: The Geodynamic World Builder has been updated to version 0.3.0. (Menno Fraters)

  • Changed: ASPECT now requires deal.II version 9.0.0 or newer. (Timo Heister, Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: There is a new, alternative stabilization method for the advection equation called SUPG. (Thomas C. Clevenger, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Ryan Grove)

  • Changed: The entropy viscosity method for stabilizing the advection equations was substantially improved leading to less artificial diffusion in particular close to boundaries. (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: The ‘visco plastic’ material model now has an option to simulate viscoelastic-plastic deformation. The ‘viscoelastic plastic’ material model has been superseded and removed. (John Naliboff, Dan Sandiford)

  • New: The “Free surface” functionality has been generalized and is now part of “Mesh deformation”. This change is incompatible to old parameter files that used the free surface. (Rene Gassmoeller, Anne Glerum, Derek Neuharth, Marine Lasbleis)

  • New benchmarks: entropy equation, viscoelastic cantilever, buoyancy-driven viscoelastic plate stress, advection in annulus, slab detachment benchmark, several advection benchmarks, rigid shear, polydiapirs, surface loading. (Wolfgang Bangerth, Fiona Clerc, Juliane Dannberg, Daniel Douglas, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Garrett Ito, Harsha Lokavarapu, John Naliboff, Elbridge G. Puckett, Cedric Thieulot)

  • Incompatibility: The option to use PETSc for linear algebra has been removed until further notice. (Timo Heister)

  • New: If the user has the libdap libraries installed then input data can be pulled from the server instead of a local file. (Kodi Neumiller, Sarah Stamps, Emmanuel Njinju, James Gallagher)

  • New: Implement the “no Advection, single Stokes” and “single Advection, iterated Newton Stokes” solver schemes. (Timo Heister, Anne Glerum)

  • New: The chunk geometry model can now incorporate initial topography from an ascii data file. (Anne Glerum)

  • New: The ‘depth average’ postprocessor now additionally computes the laterally averaged density of vertical mass flux for each depth slice in the model. (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • Changed: The gravity point values postprocessor has been significantly extended. (Ludovic Jeanniot, Cedric Thieulot)

  • New: There is now a general class MaterialModel::Utilities::PhaseFunction that can be used to model phase transitions using a smooth phase function. (Rene Gassmoeller, John Naliboff, Haoyuan Li)

  • New: ASPECT now includes a thermodynamically self-consistent compressible material model, that implements the Modified Tait equation of state that is described in Holland and Powell, 2011. (Bob Myhill)

  • New: The material models can now outsource the computation of the viscosity into a separate rheology model. (Rene Gassmoeller)

  • New: ASPECT now includes initial temperature and initial composition plugins that use ASCII data files to define the initial temperature or composition at a series of layer boundaries. (Sophie Coulson, Anne Glerum, Bob Myhill)

  • New: Extended spherical shell geometry model to include custom mesh schemes. (Ludovic Jeanniot, Marie Kajan, Wolfgang Bangerth)

  • New: There is a new termination criterion that cancels the model run when a steady state average temperature is reached. (Rene Gassmoeller, Juliane Dannberg, Eva Bredow)

  • Bug fixes to : parallel hdf5 output, chunk geometry model, initial topography modules, gplates boundary velocity plugin. (many authors)

A complete list of changes and their contributing authors can be found at https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_2_81_80_and_2_82_80.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Jacqueline Austermann, Menno Fraters, Anne Glerum, John Naliboff, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 2.1.0 (April 29, 2019)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.1.0. 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.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

    https://geodynamics.org/cig/software/aspect/

and

    https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.1.0

This release includes the following significant changes:

  • New: ASPECT has a new plugin system that allows it to prescribe a fixed heat flux (instead of prescribing the temperature) at the model boundaries.

  • New: Compositional fields can optionally be advected with the melt velocity.

  • New: There is now a visualization postprocessor that outputs the compaction length, the characteristic length scale of melt transport.

  • New: ASPECT can optionally use the Geodynamic World Builder (https://github.com/GeodynamicWorldBuilder/WorldBuilder/) to create complex initial conditions for temperature and composition.

  • New: ASPECT can now read in a depth-dependent vs to density conversion file, which can be used with the included tomography model plugins.

  • New: ASPECT can now read in a depth-dependent initial temperature from file.

  • New: The ‘ascii data’ and ‘function’ boundary velocity plugins now allow velocities to be specified along spherical (up, east, north) unit vectors.

  • New: Added a visualization plugin that directly outputs the strain rate tensor.

  • New: ASPECT can now call PerpleX to calculate material properties, phase amounts and compositions on-the-fly. This model is provided as a proof-of-concept; more efficient procedures are required for production runs.

  • New: ASPECT now outputs a dynamically generated URL based on used features to ask people to cite appropriate papers.

  • New: ASPECT has two visualization postprocessors which calculate and output the grain lag angle and the infinite strain axis (ISA) rotation timescale, respectively. These two quantities can be used to calculate the grain orientation lag parameter of Kaminski and Ribe (G3, 2002).

  • Improved: The artificial diffusion term that is added in the entropy viscosity method to the temperature and composition equations is now computed as the maximum of the physical diffusion and entropy viscosity instead of the sum. This reduces numerical diffusion for the temperature field.

  • New: Compositional fields can now be prescribed to a value that is computed in the material model as an additional output at every time step.

  • Changed: The heat flux through boundary cells is now computed using the consistent boundary flux method as described in Gresho, et al. (1987), which is much more accurate than the previously used method.

  • New: ASPECT can now calculate gravity anomalies in addition to the geoid.

  • New: ASPECT now outputs a file named original.prm in the output directory with the exact content of the parameter it got started with.

  • New: Added basic support for a volume-of-fluid interface tracking advection method in 2D incompressible box models. The VoF method is an efficient method to track a distinct compositional field without artificial diffusion.

  • New: There is now an option to output visualization data as higher order polynomials. This is an improvement in accuracy and requires less disk space than the ‘Interpolate output’ option that was available before. However the new output can only be read by ParaView version 5.5 and newer and is therefore disabled by default.

  • New: Several new benchmark cases were added.

  • Many other fixes and smaller improvements.

A complete list of changes and their contributing authors can be found at https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_2_80_80_and_2_81_80.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Jacqueline Austermann, Menno Fraters, Anne Glerum, John Naliboff, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 2.0.1 (June 21, 2018)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.0.1. 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.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

    https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.0.1

This release is a bugfix release for 2.0.0 and includes the following fixes:

  • Fixed: The ‘compositional heating’ heating plugin had a parameter ‘Use compositional field for heat production averaging’ that was used inconsistently with its description. Its first entry did not correspond to the background field, but to the first compositional field, and the last value was ignored. This is fixed now, the first entry is used for the background field, and all following values determine whether to include the corresponding compositional fields.

  • Fixed: The ‘depth dependent’ material model did not properly initialize the material model it uses as a base model. This caused crashes if the base model requires an initialization (such as the ‘steinberger’ material model). This is fixed now by properly initializing the base model.

  • Fixed: The advection assembler for DG elements was not thread-safe, which led to wrong results or crashes if a discontinuous temperature or composition discretization was combined with multithreading.

  • Disabled: The particle functionality was not tested when combined with a free surface boundary, and this combination is currently not supported. This limitation is now made clear by failing for such setups with a descriptive error message.

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Jacqueline Austermann, Menno Fraters, Anne Glerum, John Naliboff, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 2.0.0 (May 10, 2018)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 2.0.0. 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.geodynamics.org/

and the release is available from

    https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v2.0.0

This release includes the following changes:

  • New: Newton solver and defect correction Picard iterations for nonlinear problems (for the Stokes system)

  • Melt solver: Overhaul leading to improved performance and stability, better integration with other plugins

  • New: Material model with grain size evolution

  • New: Boundary temperature plugin with evolving core-mantle boundary temperature based on the heat flux through the core-mantle boundary

  • New: ASPECT can now compute the geoid in 3D spherical shell geometry

  • New: Operator splitting for reactions between compositional fields

  • New: Added a PREM gravity profile

  • Improved: Significantly reduced memory consumption in models that use many compositional fields

  • Improved: A large number of performance improvements for preconditioners, assembly, seismic tomography initial conditions, and lateral averaging

  • Improved: More flexibility for boundary and initial conditions, different plugins can be combined

  • Improved: The dynamic topography postprocessor now uses the consistent boundary flux method for computing surface stresses, which is significantly more accurate

  • New: Additional RHS force terms in the Stokes system can be added

  • New particle interpolators: nearest neighbor, bilinear least squares, harmonic average

  • New: Graphical user interface for the creation and modification of input parameter files

  • Many other fixes and small improvements.

  • Rework: Updated parameter and section names to make them more consistent and easier to understand. A script for updating parameter and source files is provided with the release.

A complete list of changes can be found at https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_85_80_and_2_80_80.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Jacqueline Austermann, Menno Fraters, Anne Glerum, John Naliboff, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 1.5.0 (February 28, 2017)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 1.5.0. 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/v1.5.0

This release includes the following changes:

  • New: Choice between different formulations for the governing equations including Boussinesq and anelastic liquid approximation.

  • New: Melt transport (two-phase flow).

  • Particles: new generators, ghost exchange, performance improvements, interpolation to fields.

  • New: Nondimensional material model for incompressible (using the Boussinesq approximation) and compressible computations (with ALA or TALA) for nondimensionalized problems. This can be used for benchmark problems like Blankenbach, King, etc..

  • New: Optional DG method for temperature/composition.

  • Adiabatic conditions: rework, now includes a reference density profile.

  • Free surface: overhaul.

  • New cookbooks: continental extension, finite strain, BurnMan interface, active tracers.

  • New benchmarks: TanGurnis, Blankenbach, King.

  • New: viscoplastic material model.

  • Material model interface cleanup.

  • Assembly performance improvements.

  • New: memory statistics postprocessor.

  • New: initial topography plugins.

  • Many other fixes and small improvements.

A complete list of changes can be found at https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_84_80_and_1_85_80.html and the release is also available from https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v1.5.0

Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 1.4.0 (May 15, 2016)#

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.

Announcement for 1.3 (May 18, 2015)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 1.3. 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/v1.3

This release includes the following changes:

  • New: Averaging of material properties between the quadrature points of a cell. This greatly increases the stability of solutions in simulations with spatially varying coefficients, and also greatly accelerates the solution, at times up to a factor of ten.

  • Corrections to the entropy stabilization scheme for compositional fields.

  • Fixed and extended: Removal of rigid body translations and rotations when the simulation has a nullspace.

  • New: VTU visualization output can now be grouped into an arbitrary number of files per time step.

  • Various fixes to the nonlinear solver residual computation.

  • New visualization postprocessors that can output the shear stress and full stress tensors.

  • Fixes to the latent heat formulation.

  • New ‘ascii data’ plugins for boundary and initial conditions.

  • New mass flux statistics postprocessor.

  • Many other fixes and small improvements.

A complete list of changes can be found at https://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_82_and_1_83.html and the release is also available from https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v1.3

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 1.2 (January 25rd, 2015)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 1.2. 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

               http://aspect.dealii.org/

This release includes the following changes:

  • methods to have truly concentric shells without distorted cells

  • linear solver improvements which give up to 2x speedup in some cases

  • boundary names like “top” instead of numbers are now supported in input files

  • new example: free surface computation with a crust as a stagnant lid

  • new benchmarks: Davies et al. and Burstedde et al.

  • new initial condition: S40RTS perturbation based on shear wave data

  • fixes to minimum/maximum refinement plugins

  • better error messages when linear solvers fail

  • many other fixes and small improvements (direct solver, file output, checkpointing, etc.)

A complete list of changes can be found at http://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_1_81_and_1_82.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 1.1 (June 1st, 2014)#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 1.1. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth 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

               http://aspect.dealii.org/

This release combines the incredible number of changes made during the ASPECT hackathon in May 2014, as well as other changes made since the last release. In particular, it includes the following changes:

  • fixes to Stokes solver tolerance (users might need to change settings!)

  • free surface computations

  • optional direct solver support

  • new material models (multi-component, simple compressible, …)

  • finer mesh refinement control using plugins

  • updates to dynamic topography postprocessors

  • updates to gplates boundary conditions

  • compositional fields can now react with each other

  • new cookbooks: reaction between fields, free surfaces

  • improved PETSc support

  • boundary conditions can now be time dependent

  • support for radiogenic heating models

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 1.0:#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 1.0. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth 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

               http://aspect.dealii.org/

This release contains a large number of changes, incorporating about one year of work of the main authors and many contributors:

  • a lot of new documentation

  • new examples (2d/3d shells, GPlates, …)

  • option to remove rotational/translational modes

  • big performance improvements

  • compositional fields: reactions, boundary conditions

  • support for periodic meshes

  • output of dynamic topography

  • incorporation of latent heat

  • experimental PETSc support

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.

Announcement for 0.3:#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 0.3. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth 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

               http://aspect.dealii.org/

This is primarily a bug fix release. It fixes a bug in the computation of adiabatic initial temperature conditions when specifying inner or outer boundary layers (thanks to Juliane Dannberg for finding and fixing it). The doxygen-generated documentation now also automatically cross-links to deal.II classes wherever they are referenced in ASPECT.

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister.

Announcement for 0.2:#

We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 0.2. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth 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

                http://aspect.dealii.org/

This release adds a significant number of new features, including:

  • support for active and passive “compositional” fields (courtesy of Juliane Dannberg)

  • more flexibility to output only some variables, drastically reducing the amount of data written

  • support for user-defined mesh refinement criteria

  • support for GPlates-generated velocity boundary conditions (courtesy of Rene Gassmoeller)

  • support for passive tracer particles

  • provision of an “introspection” module as part of the source code to make it easier and less error-prone to write extension code In addition, the manual has been significantly expanded, with many new cookbooks, and we have fixed a number of bugs. A list of changes is available here:

http://aspect.dealii.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_0_81_and_0_82.html

Wolfgang Bangerth, Timo Heister, and many other contributors.