Advanced Simulation and Computing National Code Strategy. Simulation-Based Complex Transformation.

摘要

The Integrated Codes (IC) program element plays a key role in the success of the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Campaign and the Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP). Stockpile stewardship encompasses a broad range of activities to ensure the safety, performance, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile, from development and certification of the weapons design, through manufacturing, annual assessments, surveillance, and resolution of significant identified issues, to dismantlement. The IC provides software products that bridge nuclear weapons stockpile activities and the phenomenological and computational science underpinnings of stockpile stewardship. If the SSP is to be on the critical path for nuclear weapons certification, IC must deliver predictive ASC simulation capability by correctly representing the relevant physical phenomena in full three-dimensional detail for operational stockpile scenarios. Therefore, the role of IC is to ensure that accurate, robust, and usable codes are developed, deployed, and supported across the spectrum of ASC high-performance computing platforms to support the work of analysts and designers in performing credible, predictive ASC simulations for weapons certification. To accomplish this mission, IC must also perform research in algorithms to improve the current generation of simulation capabilities, lay the groundwork for the next generation of predictive simulation tools, and preserve the core competencies of computational sciences in physics, engineering, and mathematics that enable and steward advanced simulation sciences. The direction from the Programs ASC Strategy: The Next Ten Years is to emphasize a deeper understanding of the science issues underlying predictive accuracy of computational simulations, and the attendant uncertainties related to the limitations of modeling and simulation applied to the physical world. The complex, nonlinear, and multidisciplinary nature of weapons science problems requires that the ASC Program remain a leader in computational simulation science. It is only through such leadership that major sources of uncertainty in safety and reliability assessment of aging stockpile systems can be addressed as we move into the future, and the country can maintain its nuclear deterrence capabilities. These challenges have been examined in greater detail in the ASC Roadmap. Goals have been set for addressing major sources of uncertainties in weapons phenomenology and simulation, with the associated advancements in enabling capabilities, such as computing platforms, to accomplish these goals.