Coupled Physics Environment (CouPE) library - Design, Implementation, and Release
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Over several years, high fidelity, validated mono-physics solvers with proven scalability on peta-scale architectures have been developed independently. Based on a unified component-based architecture, these existing codes can be coupled with a unified mesh-data backplane and a flexible coupling-strategy-based driver suite to produce a viable tool for analysts. In this report, we present details on the design decisions and developments on CouPE, an acronym that stands for Coupled Physics Environment that orchestrates a coupled physics solver through the interfaces exposed by MOAB array-based unstructured mesh, both of which are part of SIGMA (Scalable Interfaces for Geometry and Mesh-Based Applications) toolkit. The SIGMA toolkit contains libraries that enable scalable geometry and unstructured mesh creation and handling in a memory and computationally efficient implementation. The CouPE version being prepared for a full open-source release along with updated documentation will contain several useful examples that will enable users to start developing their applications natively using the native MOAB mesh and couple their models to existing physics applications to analyze and solve real world problems of interest. An integrated multi-physics simulation capability for the design and analysis of current and future nuclear reactor models is also being investigated as part of the NEAMS RPL, to tightly couple neutron transport, thermal-hydraulics and structural mechanics physics under the SHARP framework. This report summarizes the efforts that have been invested in CouPE to bring together several existing physics applications namely PROTEUS (neutron transport code), Nek5000 (computational fluid-dynamics code) and Diablo (structural mechanics code). The goal of the SHARP framework is to perform fully resolved coupled physics analysis of a reactor on heterogeneous geometry, in order to reduce the overall numerical uncertainty while leveraging available computational resources. The design of CouPE along with motivations that led to implementation choices are also discussed. The first release of the library will be different from the current version of the code that integrates the components in SHARP and explanation on the need for forking the source base will also be provided. Enhancements in the functionality and improved user guides will be available as part of the release. CouPE v0.1 is scheduled for an open-source release in December 2014 along with SIGMA v1.1 components that provide support for language-agnostic mesh loading, traversal and query interfaces along with scalable solution transfer of fields between different physics codes. The coupling methodology and software interfaces of the library are presented, along with verification studies on two representative fast sodium-cooled reactor demonstration problems to prove the usability of the CouPE library.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1177291
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/MCS-TM-345; 108840
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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