A new generation of convection-driven spherical dynamos using EBE finite element method

Abstract

Intrinsic planetary magnetic fields are believed to be generated by convection-driven magnetohydrodynamic processes taking place in their fluid cores that are rotating and have spherical geometry. We present a new generation of multi-layered spherical dynamo models driven by thermal convection and based on an EBE (element-by-element) finite element method taking the full advantage of modern massively parallel computers. It is demonstrated that the fully nonlinear spherical dynamo can be effectively parallelized with nearly linear scalability. The results of the new EBE finite element dynamo are then compared with the well-known benchmark dynamo based on spectral methods, showing a satisfactory agreement between two fundamentally different models. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.