A Particle-in-Cell Method to Model the Influence of Partial Melt on Mantle Convection

Abstract

Solid-state convection is the principal mechanism that controls the global dynamics and thermal evolution of the terrestrial planets. Observations such as seismology and mission data from geological structures at the planetary surfaces offer important constraints for the interior dynamics. However, our main knowledge stems from laboratory experiments and in particular from computer models. In the last years, due to the significant improve of high performance computing, computer simulations have became the most powerful access to this fluid-dynamical problem by solving partial differential equations in a discrete formulation to describe the flow in space and time. In the present work we will present results obtained using the cylindrical/spherical code GAIA with a particle-in-cell method to account for compositional changes due to partial melting of the mantle.