Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-2014

Abstract

Fully 3-D numerical simulations of thermal convection in a spherical shell have become a standard for studying the dynamics of pattern formation and its stability under perturbations to various parameter values. The question arises as to how does the discretization of the governing equations affect the outcome and thus any physical interpretation. This work demonstrates the impact of numerical discretization on the observed patterns, the value at which symmetry is broken, and how stability and stationary behavior is dependent upon it. Motivated by numerical simulations of convection in the Earth's mantle, we consider isoviscous Rayleigh-Bénard convection at infinite Prandtl number, where the aspect ratio between the inner and outer shell is 0.55. We show that the subtleties involved in development mantle convection models are considerably more delicate than has been previously appreciated, due to the rich dynamical behavior of the system. Two codes with different numerical discretization schemes: an established, community-developed, and benchmarked finite element code (CitcomS) and a novel spectral method that combines Chebyshev polynomials with radial basis functions (RBF) are compared. A full numerical study is investigated for the following three cases. The first case is based on the cubic (or octahedral) initial condition (spherical harmonics of degree ℓ =4). How variations in the behavior of the cubic pattern to perturbations in the initial condition and Rayleigh number between the two numerical discrezations is studied. The second case investigates the stability of the dodecahedral (or icosahedral) initial condition (spherical harmonics of degree ℓ = 6). Although both methods converge first to the same pattern, this structure is ultimately unstable and systematically degenerates to cubic or tetrahedral symmetries, depending on the code used. Lastly, a new steady state pattern is presented as a combination of order 3 and 4 spherical harmonics leading to a five cell or a hexahedral pattern and stable up to 70 times the critical Rayleigh number. This pattern can provide the basis for a new accuracy benchmark for 3-D spherical mantle convection codes.

Copyright Statement

This document was originally published by Copernicus Publications in Geoscientific Model Development Discussions. This work is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Details regarding the use of this work can be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. doi: 10.5194/gmdd-7-2033-2014

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