PhD theses – Swiss Geocomputing Centre

Annelore Bessat | Oceanic plate deformation and its relationship with petit-spot volcanoes Fifteen years ago, Japanese researchers found small volcanoes on the top of the downgoing plate subducting beneath Japan, a location not predicted by typical models for magma formation, i.e. mid-ocean ridges, arc volcanic zones, or intraplate volcanoes. These small lava ...
Daniel Kiss | Spontaneous generation of ductile shear zones by thermal softening The spontaneous generation of shear zones in ductile rock is fundamental for many geodynamic processes, such as the initiation of subduction, the generation of strike slip zones or the formation of tectonic nappes. Yet, it is a challenge to find a thermo-mechanically feasible mechanism ...
Richard Spitz | Lateral transition between viscous over-thrusting and folding 3D numerical modelling with application to the Helvetic nappes Thrust nappes and fold nappes are a characteristic large-scale feature of mountain belts. While a thrust nappe is defined as an allochthonous tectonic sheet that has been displaced along a thrust fault, ...
Joshua Vaughan-Hammon | Buoyancy-driven ascent of viscous bodies and associated strain We present two-dimensional numerical simulations of inclusions that are buoyantly rising in a matrix for linear and power-law viscous flow laws. We quantify the impact of: (1) effective viscosity ratio between inclusion and matrix (∆𝜂), (2) type of flow law, ...
Lorenzo Candioti supervisor: Stefan Schmalholz. on work.
Samuel Omlin | Development of Massively Parallel Near Peak Performance Solvers for Three-Dimensional Geodynamic Modelling supervisor: Yuri Podladchikov. Academia and industry have not yet been able to adapt software and numerical methods to the rapid, fundamental changes in hardware evolution since the beginning of the 21st century. A large part of today’s software and numerical methods ...
Yoann Jaquet | Dramatic effect of elasticity on thermal softening and strain localization supervisor: Stefan Schmalholz. This is a 2-D study on the impact of elasticity for the shortening of a viscoelastoplastic lithosphere. We wanted to quantify how the elasticity impacts on thermal softening, and hence on strain localization due to thermal softening. Our ...
Daniel Kiss | Towards understanding the dynamics of tectonic nappe stacking and overthrusting in the Helvetic nappe system supervisor: Stefan Schmalholz. The Western Alps are a mountain belt made of tectonic nappes and spectacular examples of natural nappes are found in the Helvetic nappe system. The thermo-mechanical processes that control the generation of nappes are until now incompletely understood. ...
Aleksandar Licul | GlacierFlow – multi-GPU three dimensional Stokes solver for simulating glacier flow supervisor: Frédéric Herman. The recent and rapid development of sophisticated ice sheet, glacier and glacial erosion models combined with increasing computational power implies that in the near future most ice flow models will likely solve the full set of Stokes equations, ...
Ludovic Räss | GPU based modeling of nonlinear waves and rheologies supervisors: Yury Podladchikov, Nina Simon. Common features visible on a large majority of the seismic cross sections are chimneys or pipe structures. They represent regions of focused fluid flow in porous media. As seismic surveys are widely performed in many regions ...