Advanced modeling, Data Processing and Simulation tools

Ghent University’s Nuclear Fusion Research unit has developed a Bayesian probability-based method for integrated data analysis (IDA) of fusion diagnostics. This approach combines heterogeneous diagnostics, enabling the extraction of validated physical results. The university’s expertise in Bayesian probability enhances trustable sensor fusion and similarity measurement between probability distributions.  These techniques find applications in predictive maintenance and sensor fusion across industries such as finance, heavy machinery, marine infrastructure, and space satellites.

The research group of the Applied Physics Department of the University of Alicante has significant expertise in modelling the radiation damage effects in structural materials used for fusion. More precisely, the team gathered existing information about cluster stabilities and mobilities together with the different models for growth of loops in Fe-based alloy under irradiation to better understand the damage caused to the microstructure and optimize future designs. This knowledge in kinetic Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations could be used in other applications where materials are exposed to radiation: fusion and fission reactors, space, healthcare, ion implantation in the semiconductor industry.

Scientists of CEA have developed this code used to model superconductors cooled in static superfluid bath. Analytical Model (STREAM) has been successfully developed for the analysis of WEST TFC09 Quench in a helium bath. STREAM offers a detailed simulation of superconductors’ stability functioning to avoid any quench issues. This code can find several applications such as medical (MRI) or hydrogen batteries.

PFN has developed a technology for plasma tomography in real-time which allows monitoring the radiated power at the outboard edge, at the plasma core, and at the divertor region. Using this model, the tomographic reconstruction can be performed in milliseconds, instead of seconds or even minutes with standard techniques. This technique can be transferred to a wide range of applications, such as disturbance prediction or anomaly/defect detection across all industries (transport vehicles; prediction of seismological events; classification of astronomical objects; medical image processing; detection and/or segmentation of objects)

ValeriaLab is a research laboratory at the University of Granada (Spain) with more than 5 years of expertise creating virtual reality environments for many different use cases. These environments represent a powerful tool at different stages of design and operation of an industrial plant or a scientific facility. During the design stage, VR reconstructions allow fast validation of maintenance/logistics processes, early detection of collision risks and immersive experiences to facilitate the design of any operation. At the operation stage, these environments enable optimization of the maintenance processes and cost- and time-effective training of the task operators. The solution has been used for fusion and is available for new applications.

By combining a deep understanding of plasma physics with machine learning techniques, DIFFER researchers developed a new ultrafast neural network model of the turbulent plasma in a fusion reactor. The neural network can accurately predict heat and particle transport in the fusion reactor up to 100.000 times faster than before: a vital tool to optimize the performance of future fusion power plants. The prediction tool for heat and particle transport can also find applications in the following IPCs: for chemical and physical processes in general (stationary particles, moving particles, particles being subjected to vibrations or pulsations), where control of temperature is necessary.

The 3D laser scanner is a system that scans the environment (in a quasi-spherical field of view) obtaining high-definition 3D model of the surrounding environment with a submillimetric resolution. The systems developed in ENEA are designed to withstand radiation, ultra-high vacuum and high magnetic fields and can be used at large distances for object detection with 1 meter accuracy. The development of the 3D laser scanner for Fusion Experimental Machines has led to the creation of many technologies and test that can find potential application across different non-fusion sectors including contactless metrology, inspection and quality control, long-range 3D image reconstruction, nuclear (non-fusion) environment and in obstacle avoidance 3D navigation systems.

The research group of the Applied Physics Department of the University of Alicante has significant expertise in modelling the radiation damage effects in structural materials used for fusion. More precisely, the team gathered existing information about cluster stabilities and mobilities together with the different models for growth of loops in Fe-based alloy under irradiation to better understand the damage caused to the microstructure and optimize future designs. This knowledge in kinetic Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations could be used in other applications where materials are exposed to radiation: fusion and fission reactors, space, healthcare, ion implantation in the semiconductor industry.

The Université Bretagne Sud has developed an algorithm in order to improve fusion plasma simulation (gyrokinetic and kinetic codes, turbulent transport) and especially reached problems of convergence of two-scale models. This project gave the way to transfer information between the various scales while attending simulating a multi-scale phenomenon. Conveniently used to tackle many phenomena involving oscillations or heterogeneities with high degree of accuracy, yet without requiring detailed input, this technology can find many applications in the study of complex fluidics, porous media flow and oscillatory dynamical systems.

Cryogenic and tritium permeations are strong challenges in fusion technology. Empresarios Agrupados Internacional (EAI) has been working, in close collaboration with CIEMAT, in different EFDA tasks concerning tritium transport modelling. They especially developed a set of libraries for the simulation of systems and processes involving hydrogen isotopes for the study of transport phenomena and of physico-chemical processes related to the extraction and purification of tritium. Easy to reuse in many different systems without having to be reprogrammed, this tool could find promising application in every area which requires the simulation of processes involving hydrogen isotopes.

Energy and particle losses due to abnormal transport in magnetic confinement devices (tokamak) are still a serious obstacle to controlled thermonuclear fusion. Even modest changes in containment properties can drastically change the energy amplification factor. The French laboratory CPT worked on a new model (computer code) to improve targeted mixing by adding a suitable perturbation to the ideal flow. The induced chaotic advection exhibits two remarkable properties which do not hold in the case of a generic perturbation: Particles remain trapped within a specific domain bounded by two oscillatingbarriers (suppression of chaotic transport along the channel), and the stochastic sea seems to cover this whole bounded domain (enhancement of mixing within the rolls).

Incoherent Thomson scattering (ITS) has been applied for decades for the determination of electron density and temperature in fusion plasmas. With the Technical University of Delft, a setup has been realized to develop incoherent Thomson scattering for welding plasmas. The tool is intended for the application to a range of sources, including Hall thrusters, planar magnetrons and electron cyclotron resonance plasmas.

Spanish engineering SME specialized in radiation calculation, located near Madrid offers the use of a software that allows to calculate the 3D activation of an equipment or structure close to a neutron source and the residual dose when the neutron source is off. SEA have been working with CIEMAT on the calculation of activation and dose maps around the beam dump to optimize the design of IFMIF define the proper local shielding device. This knowledge acquired during these developments could be applied in medical or nuclear dismantling applications for prevention and reduction of radiations exposure.

The problem of controlling transport in Hamiltonian systems is of primordial importance for charged particles in fusion plasmas. The French laboratory CPT worked on a new approach (Computer code) to control transport in phase space. The close relation of transport properties and structure of the phase space allowed to address directly the possibility of controlling transport in these systems, using captures into resonances and escapes from the resonances. Promising non-fusion applications in space propulsion, chemicals, multifluidics, passively advected quantities and two-dimensional incompressible flows are considered.

A Spanish R&D centre has developed an advanced simulation software for multi-physics problems including fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, heat transfer, electromagnetism, chemical reactions, neutronics and excitable media. The software has been specifically designed to run efficiently in supercomputers and it has in part been developed under the Education and Training Workpackage of EUROfusion. The R&D centre provides its simulation services under research project, publicly (H2020 or similar) or privately funded.

In magnetic confinement fusion machines, plasma-facing components are subjected to high heat fluxes that can cause damages. Based on many years of research works on magnetic confinement fusion at CEA, fusion experts developed a software suite for high-performance thermal imaging diagnostics. ThermaVIP platform can directly exploit all your sensor data to improve process control and understand accelerated ageing and damage of materials under high thermal stress. Any industry or laboratory whose processes or machines involve control of materials at high temperatures could be interested in this technology : metallurgy and steel, cement, glass and plastic industries, manufacture of electronic components, power lasers, particle accelerators and any high temperature industrial installations or test benches

Developed at CCFE under EUROfusion Enabling Research grant, this Spin-lattice dynamics simulation software generalise molecular dynamics to the case of magnetic materials and can simulate dynamic evolution involving non-collinear fluctuations of magnetic moments and translational motion of atoms on a million atom scale. These simulations have been applied to a variety of systems, such as iron thin films, the treatment of self-diffusion in iron and dynamic magneto-caloric effects, and can provide key informations on the materials such as thermodynamics, superconductivity, phase transitions, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion

Developed at the Technology Department of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, the VORTEX software combines virtual reality with radiation transport calculations in order to accurately determine the total dose to operatives and equipment during maintenance tasks in radiation environments. Used in a fission or fusion plant environment, VORTEX will enable the detailed planning of such tasks with a view to minimizing the exposure of the workforce. The software has the potential to be used in a variety of demanding environments, including those outside of the nuclear sector, such as space, high energy physics or healthcare.

ENEA Laboratories in Frascati developed this mesoscale soft X-ray microtomography for reconstructing the 3-D structure of small, pretty transparent to X-rays objects, with moderate spatial resolution and very low contrast, like biological samples. Commercial microtomographs are not suitable for this application due to high energy working X-rays and not efficient detection. With this fusion-derived technology, the energy spectrum is tailored to maximize the contrast of the sample and the X-ray detector is optimized accordingly.

Monitoring the dust within a tokamak is quite challenging: dust particles in the transitory state measure only few microns and despite their high thermal radiation are quite challenging to be characterized in term of speed, acceleration and change of direction. For years the plasma physicists of Institut Jean Lamour and then the spin-off APREX Solutions developed measurements tools to carry out truly statistical multi-physics investigations based on the analysis of thousands of tokamak discharges in all kinds of conditions. This solution able to track and analyze images and videos simultaneously and in real is suitable for many non-fusion use cases

The EIRENE code has been developed within the nuclear fusion domain to solve the kinetic  transport  equations  of  neutral  particles  within  natural  gas  transport.  It  is  a  multiw species  code  that  simultaneously solves a system of time dependent or stationary linear transport equations of almost arbitrary complexity.  EIRENE allows, in  a  flexible  manner,  a  complex  system  of  collisions  (elastic  collisions,  ionization  &  recombination etc) to be defined for neutral particles via an  input file.

ERO is a 3D Monte Carlo code for simulating the migration of impurities in plasma. It takes into account the source of the particles, disassociation and ionization, how the particles are transported, and also the interactions with boundary conditions. The models are supported by an extensive database that is constantly updated and complemented from different sources.

IBA DataFurnace is a general­‐purpose analytical code for data analysis of ion beam analysis (IBA) data. It is in active development with the first version released in 1997. It is general within its specifications, and was developed as a general analysis tool for IBA of any type of sample. Its main features are: implementation of the largest array of techniques of any IBA code; implementation of the most advanced physics and algorithms available; simultaneous data analysis of any combination of spectra collected from a given sample.

The renowned Università di Catania has developed a hardware system for real-­time image processing in the JET tokamak. Based on the Falcon architecture, the Cellular Neural Networks (CNN) implementation relies on a hardware system with intrinsic parallelism that can provide real-­time data processing with deterministic and constant computational times. The CNN paradigm emulates the behaviour of optic nerves in living creatures and is ideal for applications such as video surveillance, medical imaging devices, and vision-­assisted intelligent robots.

The objective is to provide a method for thermal and thermo-­mechanical simulations of stresses in materials exposed to stationary and transient heat load. The Research Centre Juelich has gained substantial expertise in calibrating simulations on the basis of the Finite Elements Method that can be used to establish numerical material models to estimate component lifetime.