Science and Technology
Public Release of CASL Infrastructure Software
The Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) comprises a suite of tools for scalable simulation of nuclear reactor core behavior. The following three key components of the VERA infrastructure have been released and made publicly-available:
Data TransferKit (DTK) is a software package designed to provide grid transfer services to the various CASL physics components. The Data Transfer Kit has been redesigned to provide a framework for more efficient and general algorithms for data transfer. These new algorithms, previously identified as an efficient means of grid-to-grid mapping for physics fields and other data, have been implemented in order to meet the data transfer requirements that will be specified by future CASL challenge problems. In addition, it is also the goal of the redesigned DTK to support the future addition of other grid transfer algorithms and other parallel software technologies in an efficient and robust matter as a means of extending its capabilities to meet future CASL needs. DTK has been given an open source BSD 3-clause license. The primary code development repository is publicly-hosted under the GitHub group for the Computation Nuclear Engineering Research Group (CNERG) at the University of Wisconsin. Anyone can access the most current development branch of DTK, as well as any future release branches through this public repository.
Lightweight Integrating Multiphysics Environment (LIME) is a small software package for helping to create multiphysics simulation codes. LIME is intended to be especially useful when separate computer codes already exist to solve different parts of a multiphysics problem. LIME provides the key high-level software (written in C++), a well-defined but flexible approach, and interfaces to enable the assembly of multiple physics codes into a single coupled multiphysics simulation code. Since the initial release of VERA, LIME has been an important software tool for coupling various physics-code components. In VERA 2.0, LIME is used to create the coupled multiphysics simulation capabilities of ANC9.5-VIPREW-BOA and of DeCART-Star-CCM+. In addition, many of the other VERA physics codes have been “wrapped” under LIME, a first step in preparation for future coupling with other physics codes. Version 1.0 of LIME has been released under a “BSD” type open source license, and both a User’s Guide and a theory manual have been completed and are now available. Access to the LIME development repository is not provided at this time.
Tribal Build, Integrate, and Test System (TriBITS) is built on top of the open-source Kitware CMake/CTest/CDash toolset and provides a solution for very large scale projects, especially meta-projects resulting from the integration of many different (but interrelated) projects. VERA uses TriBITS for its primary build, integration, testing, and release-support system. All VERA component codes are integrated using TriBITS. TriBITS allows codes to build natively or as part of a larger meta-project in a flexible manner. TriBITS is quickly becoming the native build system for many VERA-related software efforts including SCALE, Denovo, Drekar, MPACT, and others are coming online. Snapshots of the main TriBITS development repository are being made publicly-available under a BSD-like open-source license. The snapshots (under git version control) will be updated on an automated basis once there is demonstrated demand.