ASPECT is a code to simulate convection in Earth's mantle and elsewhere. It has grown from a pure mantle-convection code into a tool for many geodynamic applications including applications for inner core convection, lithospheric scale deformation, two-phase flow, and numerical methods development. The project is supported by CIG (http://geodynamics.org).

The steps to install the necessary dependencies and ASPECT itself are described in the Installation instructions section of the ASPECT manual. If you encounter problems during the installation, please consult our wiki for typical installation problems or specific instructions for MacOS users, before asking your question on the mailing list.

Instructions on how to run and extend, as well as on how to interpret the output of ASPECT can also be found in the ASPECT manual. This manual also discusses the structure of the source code.

ASPECT is a community project that lives by the participation of its members — i.e., including you! It is our goal to build an inclusive and participatory community so we are happy that you are interested in participating! We have collected a set of guidelines and advice on how to get involved in the community and keep them in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in ASPECT's repository.

For more information see:

• The official website at http://aspect.geodynamics.org

• The current manual

• For questions on the source code of ASPECT, portability, installation, etc., use the aspect-devel mailing list. This mailing list is where the ASPECT users and developers all hang out.

• ASPECT is primarily based on the deal.II library. If you have particular questions about deal.II, contact the deal.II discussion groups.

• In case of more general questions about mantle convection, you can contact the CIG mantle convection mailing lists.

• If you have specific questions about ASPECT that are not suitable for public and archived mailing lists, you can contact the primary developers:

  • Wolfgang Bangerth: [email protected]
  • Timo Heister: [email protected]
  • Rene Gassmoeller: [email protected]
  • Juliane Dannberg: [email protected]

ASPECT is published under GPL v2 or newer.