	SSP 1994 project summary:

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Network Modelling of Fault Patterns on Parallel Systems

Deformation in the top 10-15 km of the earth's crust is reflected by populations of faults and fractures on all scales. These structures play a major role in determining the permeability of the crust, affecting the storage and migration of hydrocarbons, groundwater and pollutants.

The network modelling approach allows modelling of large scale deformation of a material which behaves elastically at low stress levels, but which can rupture in a pattern which depends on heterogeneous material properties. A unique aspect of the model, which allows us to model faults specifically, is that ruptured elements in the lattice "heal" and can continue to support stress. This phenomenon is consistent with frictional sliding on shear fractures, and allows us to model the long time scale characteristics of the deformation.

The computational guts of the code is a linear system solver which solves for the stress distribution in the crust at each timestep. Currently a conjugate gradient algorithm written in serial Fortran 77 is employed. Model sizes and time-scales are currently restricted by run times: it takes several days to obtain results from a single simulation using a Sparc10, even for moderate sized lattices.

This project aims to explore ways of significantly reducing the computational time by parallelising the existing code. The port is targeted at the SPMD Cray T3D.

Steven Webster worked on this project.

Compressed PostScript of Steven's final report is available here (263999 bytes) .

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