Modeling gravitational instabilities in the partially molten crust with a Volume-Of-Fluid method

Abstract

This work aims at investigating the thermo-mechanical conditions required for the development of convective instabilities and polydiapirism in the partially molten root of orogenic belts. First, we tested the volume-of-fluid method (VOF) implemented in codes OpenFOAM (open source) and Jadim (in-house IMFT code). Comparison of theoretical and numerical solutions of Rayleigh-Taylor and Rayleigh-Benard instabilities show that Openfoam is most satisfactory in terms of speed and mass conservation (Louis-Napoleon et al., 2020).