A hybrid discrete exterior calculus and finite difference method for anelastic convection in spherical shells

Abstract

The present work develops, verifies, and benchmarks a hybrid discrete exterior calculus and finite difference (DEC-FD) method for density-stratified thermal convection in spherical shells. Discrete exterior calculus (DEC) is notable for its coordinate independence and structure preservation properties. The hybrid DEC-FD method for Boussinesq convection has been developed by Mantravadi et al. (2023). Motivated by astrophysics problems, we extend this method assuming anelastic convection, which retains density stratification; this has been widely used for decades to understand thermal convection in stars and giant planets. In the present work, the governing equations are splitted into surface and radial components and discrete anelastic equations are derived by replacing spherical surface operators with DEC and radial operators with FD operators. The novel feature of this work is the discretization of anelastic equations with the DEC-FD method and the assessment of a hybrid solver for density-stratified thermal convection in spherical shells. The discretized anelastic equations are verified using the method of manufactured solution (MMS). We performed a series of three-dimensional convection simulations in a spherical shell geometry and examined the effect of density ratio on convective flow structures and energy dynamics. The present observations are in agreement with the benchmark models.