# Release of ASPECT 3.1.0 **URL:** \ **Category:** Announcements\ **Created:** [September 28, 2026, 11:37am UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/release-of-aspect-3-1-0/4631 "2026-09-28T11:37:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gassmoeller](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/community.geodynamics.org/gassmoeller/32/11_2.png) [@gassmoeller](https://community.geodynamics.org/u/gassmoeller)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2026, 11:37am UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/release-of-aspect-3-1-0/4631/1 "2026-09-28T11:37:33Z")
We are pleased to announce the release of ASPECT 3.1.0. ASPECT is the Advanced Solver for Planetary Evolution, Convection, and Tectonics. It uses modern numerical methods such as adaptive mesh refinement, multigrid solvers, and a modular software design to provide a fast, flexible, and extensible mantle convection solver. ASPECT is available from ```auto https://aspect.geodynamics.org/ ``` and the release is available from ```auto https://geodynamics.org/resources/aspect ``` and ```auto https://github.com/geodynamics/aspect/releases/tag/v3.1.0 ``` Among others this release includes the following significant changes: - Support for modeling surface deformation has been significantly extended. Fastscape erodibility can now vary in space and time according to climate and sea level data, checkpointing functionality has been improved, tangential boundary velocities along deformed boundaries are more accurate, and support for initially deformed boundaries has been improved. Preliminary coupling to the landscape evolution library Landlab is available as well. (Liang Xue, Derek Neuharth, Michael Pons, Daniel Douglas, Zhibin Lei, Anne Glerum, Ninghui Tian, Bob Myhill, Rene Gassmoeller, Timo Heister, Wolfgang Bangerth) - Modeling crystal-preferred orientation and anisotropic viscosity has been significantly improved. New slip systems for olivine and clinopyroxene have been added and benchmarked against lab results, a cookbook for CPO-induced anisotropy has been added, checkpointing of CPO has been improved. (Xiaochuan Tian, Yijun Wang, Theo Haeussler, Agnes Kiraly, Daniel Douglas, Menno Fraters) - There is a new plugin system for prescribed dilation and a plugin system that allows prescribing solution values in parts of the model domain. (Alexandr Dizov, Haoyuan Li) - A new composition type is available which is used to keep track of the state of reactions, for example in models considering reaction kinetics. A cookbook illustrating reaction kinetics was added. (Haoyuan Li, Buchanan Kerswell) - The entropy method now supports multiple chemical compositions. (Ranpeng Li, Juliane Dannberg, Rene Gassmoeller, Bob Myhill) - Different particle managers can now have different postprocessing output intervals and formats. Particle managers are now created if particles are used to advect compositional fields, even if the particles postprocessor is not active. There is now an option to advect different particle sets with solid or fluid velocities. (Anne Glerum, Francesco Radica, Arijit Chakraborty) - Robin boundary conditions are now available for the temperature field, which allow prescribing a linear combination of a prescribed temperature and a prescribed heat flux. (Juliane Dannberg) - ASPECT now has a gravity plugin and a heating plugin considering tidal forces. This is useful for modeling moons orbiting a large planet. (Hyunseong Kim, Antoniette Greta Grima, Wolfgang Bangerth) - Visco-elasticity and visco-elasto-plasticity have been updated to more accurately track elastic stresses over time. Elasticity can now be combined with two-phase melt transport. (Anne Glerum, Robert Myhill, Rene Gassmoeller, Juliane Dannberg, John Naliboff, Gerry Puckett, Esther Heckenbach, Ryan Stoner) - Checkpointing can now also be requested at specific model times. Parameters have been added to configure how many checkpoints to keep, restart from a specific checkpoint, or restart from the checkpoint whose time is closest to a specified model time. The checkpoint file structure has been improved. (Anne Glerum, Ninghui Tian, Timo Heister) - The geometric multigrid (GMG) Stokes solvers no longer require material property averaging and support more averaging types. The global coarsening variant of GMG now supports periodic boundary conditions in Cartesian and spherical geometries and supports mesh refinement on periodic boundaries. (Timo Heister) - Two-phase flow simulations can now use discontinuous finite elements, Darcy advection can now proceed along pressure gradients instead of purely buoyancy driven. Particle properties can be interpolated into compositional fields of different finite element discretizations. (Timo Heister, Francesco Radica, Daniel Douglas) - A linear solver failure strategy inside nonlinear solvers was introduced. Bugfixes to adiabatic profile and strain rate calculations lead to more robust linear and nonlinear Stokes solver convergence. (Haoyuan Li, Ranpeng Li, Lucy Lu, Yimin Jin) - The Geodynamic World Builder has been updated to version 1.1. Initial ASPECT topography can now be prescribed through the World Builder. (Menno Fraters, Michael Pons, World Builder Contributors) - ASPECT now requires deal.II 9.6.0 or newer and a C++ compiler with C++17 support. ASPECT can now use the Tpetra solver packages provided by Trilinos 17 if configured with deal.II 9.8.0 or newer. (Timo Heister, Rene Gassmoeller, Wolfgang Bangerth) - The online documentation now includes the Doxygen API reference, see [ASPECT: Main Page](https://aspect-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/doxygen/index.html). (Timo Heister) - Many new cookbooks and benchmark cases have been added. Many deprecated input options and source code functions have been removed. Many bugs and inconsistencies have been fixed. (Many authors, see link below) A complete list of all changes and their authors can be found at > **[ASPECT: Changes between version 3.0.0 and version 3.1.0](https://aspect.geodynamics.org/doc/doxygen/changes_between_3_80_80_and_3_81_80.html)** We are thankful for all feature and model contributions, code reviews, forum posts, bug reports, and general help provided by members of our community. Your contributions have helped make ASPECT what is it today. Wolfgang Bangerth, Juliane Dannberg, Daniel Douglas, Menno Fraters, Rene Gassmoeller, Anne Glerum, Timo Heister, Bob Myhill, John Naliboff, Arushi Saxena, Cedric Thieulot, and many other contributors. ---
**Author:** ![d.shanker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@d.shanker](https://community.geodynamics.org/u/d.shanker)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2026, 2:47pm UTC](https://community.geodynamics.org/t/release-of-aspect-3-1-0/4631/2 "2026-09-28T14:47:27Z")
Dear Sir/Madam, Thank you so much for the information. I will look it with great interest. Regards