The 32 Threads

When modelling deformation, high resolution and high displacement combined can be a tall order. Computationally it is quite demanding but if you have a machine that you can "hijack" for a while the results are worth waiting for I think. Here is a (2 1/2 mins or so) movie of 6 km shortening being accrued/accommodated in a thrust wedge. Initial geometry 1.25 x 20.0 km, so 30% shortening of this frictional cohesive section, very weak base. Resolution is approx. 10m, c. 80,000 elements. Right end-wall is displaced horizontally 0.0005m per time step to accrue the 6000m shortening (that is 12 million time-steps). But the 2D discrete element code handles this with ease and is stable. 32 threads OpenMP running under Windows. First half of the movie is just the "simple" geometry as it develops showing lots of nice features, second half of movie is the incremental max. shear strain (calculated over previous 2m of shortening) which is a great way of visualizing localization, activation of faults etc etc.

download the movie here