Progresses in the Development of a Virtual Tokamak Platform based on Digital Twin Technology

Digital twin technology can be defined as a collection of IT technologies which enable a virtualization of the shapes and functions of objects in digital space. Along with the steady progresses in supercomputing technologies, recent advancements in large scale GPU computing enable a digital twining of highly complex objects comprising a large scale plant. In this presentation, we report recent progresses in the development of a virtual tokamak platform based on the digital twin technology. Previously, we have identified and developed several enabling IT technologies for fusion digital twin, and applied them to implement the Virtual KSTAR (V-KSTAR) as the digital twin of the KSTAR tokamak[1, 2]. Two different modes of operation were provided by this first version of the V-KSTAR: 1) real time monitoring of machine operation and experiment and 2) integrated 3D visualization and analysis of fusion simulation. Recently, a new capability was added as the 3^rd mode of operation 3) diagnostics simulation on KSTAR. As a demonstrative example of the 3^rd operational mode, we introduce the application of the V-KSTAR for the development of a new Lyman alpha diagnostics on KSTAR. Though the development of the virtual tokamak platform was started with the KSTAR tokamak as the first target device, our development is ultimately aiming a general platform. We also report the progresses in the generalization of the software designs toward a general platform, which is applicable for any tokamak device.