PyLith#

Description#

PyLith is a finite-element code with a primary focus on modeling interseismic and coseismic deformation of Earth’s crust and upper mantle. PyLith supports 2D and 3D static, quasistatic (neglecting inertia), and dynamic (including inertia) formulations of the governing equations, which can be elasticity, incompressble elasticity, or poroelasticity. A variety of elastic and viscoelastic bulk rheologies are supported. Boundary conditions include Dirichlet, Neumann, and absorbing boundaries. Faults are treated as interior interfaces. Currently, only the slip must be prescribed (kinematic rupture). We plan to reimplement spontaneous rupture (fault friction) in an upcoming release; see ref{sec-development-plan} for more information.

The code is written in C++ and Python and uses MPI for parallel processing. We use the Pyre Python framework to setup the simulation. We leverage PETSc for finite-element data structures and operations as well as linear and nonlinear solvers.

Other sources of documentation#

PyLith development team#

The primary developers are:

  • Brad Aagaard (U.S. Geological Survey)

  • Matthew Knepley (University at Buffalo)

  • Charles Williams (GNS Science)

License#

Copyright (c) 2010-2022 University of California, Davis

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.