Welcome to the Geodynamics site!
The Geodynamics group at Washington University in St. Louis uses tools of fluid dynamics, materials science, applied mathematics, and computer science to investigate dynamic processes that occur in planetary interiors. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the formation and evolution of planets in the Solar System and beyond. Our research topics include melting, crystallization, and differentiation of Earth and planets in their early history, the origin of plate tectonics, subsequent planetary evolution, and the present-day dynamics of planetary interiors. Some problems that we study have applications beyond Earth and planetary sciences, for example, the problems of convection in fluids with complex rheologies and kinetics of phase transformations. Most of our research requires numerical simulations on high-performance computer clusters.