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

Journal Article · Thu Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JCP.2016.09.003· OSTI ID:22622217

Clarno, Kevin; Sieger, Matt; Bartlett, Roscoe; Collins, Benjamin ^[1]; Pawlowski, Roger; Schmidt, Rodney; Summers, Randall ^[2]

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1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831 (United States)
2. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185 (United States)

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.

• OSTI ID: 22622217
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 326; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2016 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-9991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

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LIMITING VALUES
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