Phase-field methods represent a versatile and effective approach to modelling the spatiotemporal evolution of complex physical systems that exhibit significant heterogeneities, such as phase transitions, coalescence, and cracking. These methods have found extensive application in the field of materials science, including in the modelling of the behaviour of nuclear fuels.
The phase-field approach has also been employed in recent studies conducted with the multiphysics computational tools of the PLEIADES platform. Broadly speaking, the PLEIADES/Fuel Performance Codes aim at providing a state-of-the-art multiphysics multiscale description of the fuel under irradiated conditions. The inclusion of advanced multiphysics and multiscale modelling such as phase-field, is a logical step forward.
Consequently, the CEA is developing SLOTH, a multiphase-field multicomponent framework, dedicated to the study of fuel behaviour at different scales of description, from nominal operating conditions to severe accident conditions.
PLEIADES/SLOTH is developed at CEA under LPGL license (Version 3). It is based on the the MFEM Finite Element library, which already includes the main features to have a robust, flexible and massively parallel implementation of the solution algorithms.
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Documentation
For more details, see CONTRIBUTING.md. Main guidelines are:
- For any bug, please create an issue and add the label "bug". We welcome all feedback to make
SLOTHas robust as possible. - If you would like to participate and add functionality to
SLOTH, you can find instructions for coding style, tests and pull request process in CONTRIBUTING.md. - If you have any support-related / collaboration questions, please contact the team at clement.introini@cea.fr.
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Modelling & Development Team
- Clément Introïni (Phase-Field, Computer Science, Material Science)
- Raphaël Prat (Computer Science, HPC)
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Students Team
SLOTH is part of the PLEIADES platform jointly developed by the French Atomic Energy Commission in collaboration with its industrial partners, mainly EDF and Framatome.
The code is developed under GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3