The Paramak: automated parametric geometry construction for fusion reactor designs.

Jonathan Shimwell,Matthew Bluteau,Rémi Delaporte-Mathurin,Declan Morbey,Patrick Shriwise,John Billingsley,Andrew Davis

doi:10.12688/f1000research.28224.1

Abstract

During the conceptual design process of fusion reactors it is useful to rapidly prototype different design concepts and assess their suitability against a range of high level requirements. Rapid prototyping allows the 'fail early' mantra of other fields to be applied to engineering design. Furthermore, the rapid generation of low fidelity analysis allows fast exploration of design space, which enables better decisions to be made during concept selection and the detailed design phase. The Paramak is an open-source tool that aims to provide automated parameter driven 3D CAD models for fusion reactor components and magnetic fusion reactors. The geometry produced is compatible with several analysis workflows and this allows iterative automated model building and analysis to help steer the design concept optimisation process. The Paramak uses CadQuery 2 to create the 3D CAD model. The Paramak framework is used to create a few example reactor configurations including: a spherical reactor, a regular large radius tokamak and a compact submersion tank reactor. Input parameters for the various reactors that the Paramak can generate generally fall into three categories: continuous ranges such as blanket thickness, integer ranges such as number of toroidal field coils and categorical parameters such as type of divertor. The Paramak facilitates parameter studies where users can investigate the impact of input design parameters on the reactor performance. The use of modern software practices allows the geometry to be continuously tested in analysis workflows to ensure it is fit for purpose. The generation of output metrics from input parameters lends itself to the use of data science and machine learning approaches in order to steer the design. The Paramak provides rapid construction of analysis ready CAD in a manner that allows the designer to save time when exploring the design space for design studies and facilitate automated generative design.

Highlights

When assessing the suitability of a fusion reactor design, one of the stages is the construction of a 3D model
While some automated analysis remains a challenge in certain disciplines, progress is being made on the automation of a number of domains used in the analysis of fusion reactors
Automated model creation can reduce the risk of geometry creation becoming a bottleneck in the design cycle

Summary

Introduction

When assessing the suitability of a fusion reactor design, one of the stages is the construction of a 3D model This tends to be a digital 3D CAD model which is adapted for use in different analysis disciplines, for example, engineering and neutronics. There are several possible solutions for this such as incorporating more analysis into the PLM software or developing new open CAD formats that support parametric components such as STP AP2427. The computational time to generate the 3D volumes and export CAD files in STP format once the input dimensions have been specified varies from around 20 seconds for a simple BallReactor() to around 40 seconds for a SegmentedBallReactor() on a desktop computer (i5 Intel processor) In this case the time difference is due to segmenting the blanket and filleting the edges of the blanket. While this paper aims to focus on the geometry creation within the Paramak there are future papers planned where utilisation within neutronics and engineering workflows will be demonstrated

Conclusion

ISO 10303-242

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