Parallel Validation Tools for Fusion Simulations

Numerical simulations, needed for design and operation of new fusion devices such as ITER, play a critical role in the exploration of new experimental regimes. These simulations must be carefully validated against existing experiments. Synthetic diagnostics, the generation of data that can be directly compared to experimental diagnostics, is an excellent test for simulations. However, the development and use of synthetic diagnostics is often problematic, due to incompatibilities of the data representations used in simulations and experiments. Thus, there is a need for tools to standardize and streamline the generation of synthetic diagnostics and a means to run them in a scalable manner. This project will develop a standard to describe diagnostics data, implement a set of synthetic diagnostics modules, and facilitate a workflow related to the running diagnostics. The synthetic diagnostics modules will apply transformations to simulation data and produce data directly comparable with experiments. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee The new software infrastructure should provide consulting business opportunities with companies involved in fusion projects (ITER, KSTAR, and JT-60). The technology also could be applied to multiple high-performance applications, such as computational fluid dynamics codes used in industry