Van Keken, P.E.,
Cylindrical scaling for dynamical cooling models of the Earth,
Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 124, 119-130, 2001.
A detailed comparison is presented between axisymmetric spherical shell and cylindrical geometry for use in mantle convection modeling. If a rescaling of the mantle and core radii is adopted, such that the curvature of the cylindrical model approximates that of the spherical Earth, the heat and mass transport properties turn out to be very similar. Without the scaling, the volume of the lower mantle and the surface area of the core are overestimated, which leads to incorrect estimates of heat production and heat flow. This is particularly important for thermal evolution models. An explicit comparison with parameterized convection calculations shows that the scaling used here provides a good approach to dynamical model calculations.
Erratum: There are a number of errors in the table due to typos and a (minor) error in the boundary conditions. While these do not influence the main conclusion, they make it a bit difficult to accurately reproduce the results originally published . The preprint below contains the original tables with errors; the corrected version provides the corrected and updated values.
Keywords: Mantle convection; Modeling; Numerical methods; Finite elements