SPECFEM3D Cartesian

SPECFEM3D Cartesian simulates acoustic (fluid), elastic (solid), coupled acoustic/elastic, poroelastic or seismic wave propagation in any type of conforming mesh of hexahedra (structured or not.) It can, for instance, model seismic waves propagating in sedimentary basins or any other regional geological model following earthquakes. It can also be used for non-destructive testing or for ocean acoustics.

SPECFEM3D_Cartesian version 2.0 uses the continuous Galerkin spectral-element method, which can be seen as a particular case of the discontinuous Galerkin technique with optimized efficiency owing to its tensorized basis functions, to simulate forward and adjoint coupled acoustic-(an)elastic seismic wave propagation on arbitrary unstructured hexahedral meshes.

This major new release benefits from advances in hexahedral meshing, load balancing and code optimizations. Meshing may be accomplished using a mesh generation tool kit such as CUBIT, GiD or Gmsh, and load balancing is facilitated by graph partitioning based on the SCOTCH library, which is included in the package. The previous internal layer cake mesher has been extended to allow greater flexibility and also continues to be available. Topography, bathymetry and Moho undulations are readily included in a mesh, and physical dispersion and attenuation associated with anelasticity are accounted for using a series of standard linear solids. Coupling between fluid and solid regions is accommodated using domain decomposition, thereby facilitating off-shore simulations. Finite-frequency Fréchet derivatives for earthquake and seismic interferometric data are calculated based on adjoint methods in both fluid and solid domains, thereby facilitating "adjoint tomography" with earthquakes and seismic noise.

Current Release

Source Packages

Current Stable Release

To obtain the latest stable release of the code, use the following git command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/geodynamics/specfem3d.git

View Prior Source Releases

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User Resources

User Manual

The SPECFEM3D Cartesian user manual is available online.

Community Wiki

Visit the SPECFEM3D Cartesian Wiki page for additional support with building, using, or modifying SPECFEM3D Cartesian.

SPECFEM3D Cartesian Publications List

Research publications using SPECFEM3D Cartesian.

Community Discussion

Browse the CIG Mailing List Archive to find past discussions and previous troubleshooting help, or post to the CIG forum with questions or comments.

Developer Resources

Development Version

If you are interested in getting the development version of this code from the CIG repository, use the following git command:

git clone --recursive --branch devel https://github.com/geodynamics/specfem3d.git

You can also browse the history of modifications in the Git repository.

Issue/Bug Tracker on Github

Browse and/or submit new issues at our Github Issues Tracker.

Doxygen Documentation

Auto-generated Doxygen documentation is available for the Development and Release codebases.

SPECFEM3D Cartesian Users Map

Shows location of all users who downloaded SPECFEM3D Cartesian in the past year (image updated daily.)