Teaching: Thermal convection

Thermal convection

The following movies show thermal convection in the infinite Prandl number, laminar flow limit as appropriate for the Earth's mantle. The movies were produced with the finite element code Citcom by Moresi and Solomatov (1995) as modified by Allen McNamara. For discussion, see our lecture notes on Tectonic Geodynamics.

Isoviscous, bottom heated models

The aspect ratio of the computational domain is four (4 x 1 , 2D), there is no internal heating, fixed thermal boundary conditions on the top and bottom (heating from below) and free slip along the boundaries. Ra is the Rayleigh number which fully describes system behavior for these examples.

Isoviscous, mixed and internal heating models

Temperature and depth-dependent viscosity

Effect of phase transitions