planetmodel: spherically layered planetary models

planetmodel is a Python library for spherically layered planetary models — a planet described as concentric layers with physical properties on each — and the meshes that hand such a model to a numerical solver.

With this library you can build a model (PREM out of the box, simple layered models, any mineos deck file, or a model type of your own), ask it for its properties with the discontinuities treated honestly, deform it with ellipticity or surface topography, and mesh it: a spectral-element mesh along the radius, or a 2D or 3D finite-element mesh for MFEM, refined where you need it. A sub-package, planetmodel.randomfield, draws Matérn random fields on balls, annuli and layers.

A model is three things:

• A skeleton: the list of boundary radii, increasing, possibly starting above zero for a hollow shell.

• A geometry: the skeleton placed in the physical world by one continuous mapping from the reference (spherical) body to the physical one, plus names for the layers and interfaces.

• Fields: data on each layer, named by a vocabulary that says what each name means and what dimensions it carries.

Installation

pip install planetmodel

The base install depends on numpy and scipy alone. Meshing, MFEM export, spherical-harmonic grid transforms and plotting are extras:

pip install "planetmodel[meshing,mfem,harmonics,plot]"