The Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA): Design and architecture

John A. Turner; Kevin Clarno; Matt Sieger; Roscoe Bartlett; Benjamin Collins; Roger Pawlowski; Rodney Schmidt; Randall Summers

doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2016.09.003

The Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA): Design and architecture

John A. Turner, Kevin Clarno, Matt Sieger, Roscoe Bartlett, Benjamin Collins, Roger Pawlowski, Rodney Schmidt, Randall Summers

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

168 Scopus citations

Abstract

VERA, the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications, is the system of physics capabilities being developed and deployed by the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL). CASL was established for the modeling and simulation of commercial nuclear reactors. VERA consists of integrating and interfacing software together with a suite of physics components adapted and/or refactored to simulate relevant physical phenomena in a coupled manner. VERA also includes the software development environment and computational infrastructure needed for these components to be effectively used. We describe the architecture of VERA from both software and numerical perspectives, along with the goals and constraints that drove major design decisions, and their implications. We explain why VERA is an environment rather than a framework or toolkit, why these distinctions are relevant (particularly for coupled physics applications), and provide an overview of results that demonstrate the use of VERA tools for a variety of challenging applications within the nuclear industry.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	544-568
Number of pages	25
Journal	Journal of Computational Physics
Volume	326
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2016.09.003
State	Published - Dec 1 2016

Funding

Notice : This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy . The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation , for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000 .

Keywords

Core simulator
Coupled physics
Fluid flow
Modeling
Multiphysics
Neutronics
Nuclear reactor
Simulation
Thermal-hydraulics

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10.1016/j.jcp.2016.09.003

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title = "The Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA): Design and architecture",

abstract = "VERA, the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications, is the system of physics capabilities being developed and deployed by the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL). CASL was established for the modeling and simulation of commercial nuclear reactors. VERA consists of integrating and interfacing software together with a suite of physics components adapted and/or refactored to simulate relevant physical phenomena in a coupled manner. VERA also includes the software development environment and computational infrastructure needed for these components to be effectively used. We describe the architecture of VERA from both software and numerical perspectives, along with the goals and constraints that drove major design decisions, and their implications. We explain why VERA is an environment rather than a framework or toolkit, why these distinctions are relevant (particularly for coupled physics applications), and provide an overview of results that demonstrate the use of VERA tools for a variety of challenging applications within the nuclear industry.",

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AU - Pawlowski, Roger

AU - Schmidt, Rodney

AU - Summers, Randall

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The Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA): Design and architecture

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Keywords

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