Convert a tesseroid model to prisms and calculate in spherical coordinatesΒΆ

The tess2prism.sh script converts a tesseroid model to prisms (using tessmodgen) and calculates the gravitational potential, gravitational attraction, and gravity gradient tensor in spherical coordinates:

#!/bin/bash

# Generate a prism model from a tesseroid model.
# Prisms will have the same mass as the tesseroids and
# associated spherical coordinates of the center of
# the top of the tesseroid.

tess2prism < tess-model.txt > prism-model.txt

# Generate a regular grid in spherical coordinates,
# pipe the grid to the computation programs,
# and dump the result on output.txt
# prismpots calculates the potential in spherical
# coordinates, prismgs calculates the full
# gravity vector, and prismggts calculates the full
# gravity gradient tensor.

tessgrd -r-160/0/-80/0 -b100/100 -z250e03 | \
prismpots prism-model.txt | \
prismgs prism-model.txt | \
prismggts prism-model.txt -v > output.txt

The tesseroid model file looks like this:

# Test tesseroid model file
-77 -75 -41 -39 0 -50000 500
-79 -77 -41 -39 0 -50000 500
-81 -79 -41 -39 0 -50000 500
-83 -81 -41 -39 0 -50000 500
-85 -83 -41 -39 0 -50000 500

and the converted prism model looks like this:

# Prisms converted from tesseroid model with tess2prism 1.1dev
#   local time: Wed May 16 14:34:47 2012
#   tesseroids file: stdin
#   conversion type: equal mass|spherical coordinates
#   format: dx dy dz density lon lat r
# Test tesseroid model file
221766.31696055 169882.854778591 50000 499.977196258595 -76 -40 6378137
221766.31696055 169882.854778591 50000 499.977196258595 -78 -40 6378137
221766.31696055 169882.854778591 50000 499.977196258595 -80 -40 6378137
221766.31696055 169882.854778591 50000 499.977196258595 -82 -40 6378137
221766.31696055 169882.854778591 50000 499.977196258595 -84 -40 6378137

Note that the density of prisms is altered. This is so that the tesseroid and corresponding prism have the same mass.

The result should look like the following (“column” means the column of the output file).

../_images/tess2prism.png

Plot of the columns of output.txt generated by tess2prism.sh. Orthographic projection (thanks to the Basemap toolkit of matplotlib).