Development of a software package for visualization of three-dimensional mass distributions and forward gravity modelling: Fid-Bau Portal

Development of a software package for visualization of three-dimensional mass distributions and forward gravity modelling

Johannes Fellner

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a software package, called GEOCOM, for the visualization of three-dimensional mass distributions and forward gravity modelling. The developed software package is intended for use in geophysical and geodetic fields and represents a powerful tool for scientific research within the scope of forward gravity modelling. The development process was based on the high-level programming language MATLAB®. In order to guarantee an efficient handling of numerous functions, the whole software program is based on several graphical user interfaces (GUIs), which provide an interactive environment for data visualization, three-dimensional mass modelling and numeric gravity computation. The density application enables user-defined topographical as well as isostatic density models based on a layer-oriented input scheme. The subdivision of the density model into volumes of discrete elements (right rectangular prisms) permits the usage of an analytical solution with respect to the calculation of the gravitational attraction of each element. Focusing on several numerical case studies, which demonstrate topographic, as well as topographic-isostatic density models, this paper shows possible software applications using the developed software package GEOCOM.