Running ASPECT models in Noppe

We are using Noppe for both the Python exercises and for running models using ASPECT, which requires a bit of additional work for visualization of the ASPECT model outputs. Here is a short set of instructions about how to run an ASPECT model on Noppe, and how to create a tar file that you can download to be able to visualize the results in ParaView.

Running ASPECT

The cookbook ASPECT models are available in the shared directory. To run one of the cookbook models, you should open a terminal in JupyterLab (File -> New -> Terminal), change directories to you my-work directory, and then run, for example:

cd ~/my-work/
aspect-release ../shared/cookbooks/crustal_deformation/crustal_model_2D.prm

This is recommended in the current Noppe environment to avoid oversubscribing nodes using mpirun. On computer clusters or your own computer it is fine to run using MPI, by running, for example:

# Not recommended in Noppe!
mpirun -n 8 aspect-release crustal_model_2D.prm

assuming the crustal_model_2D.prm parameter file is in the local directory.

Creating a downloadable output file

Once your model has run, you can create a tar file with the output by running a command similar to that below. This will create a file called output-crustal_model_2D.tar that contains all of the output in the output-crustal_model_2D directory. After creating this file, you can find it in your my-work directory in the JupyterLab file browser and then right-click on the file and select Download to download a copy.

tar cvf output-crustal_model_2D.tar output-crustal_model_2D/

Viewing the output in ParaView

After downloading your tar file, you can extract it using your system utilities (double clicking on the file should work in most instances). Then open ParaView and load in the output. For example, you should find the output in the solution subdirectory with the file group name solution-..pvtu.