Proceedings

EPJD Colloquium - Challenges and opportunities in verification and validation of low temperature plasma simulations and experiments

In the field of plasma physics, simulations are becoming increasingly relied upon to elucidate fundamental plasma phenomena as well as to simulate real-world plasma reactors. This new colloquium published in EPJD provides a description of how one research group (at Sandia National Laboratories) incorporates verification and validation (V&V) processes in their low temperature plasma (LTP) research and development activities.

These V&V activities are applied to a particle-in-cell (PIC), Direction Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) code, Aleph. Many other disciplines have adopted and integrated V&V methodology to a much greater extent than is present in the LTP community. Sandia has a deep V&V culture in many of these other disciplines, and that culture has been driving LTP V&V developments for many years. This paper will introduce the reader to both basic processes, such as using analytic verification problems and testing convergence of numerical methods, as well as more advanced ones that are likely new to the LTP community. For example, the development and maintenance of a Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table (PIRT) has proved extremely useful in organizing technical work to improve code predictivity for complex systems. The PIRT provides a framework in which to asses and track the maturity, availability, and correctness of physical models and their code implementations. In general, a framework for capturing and demonstrating evidence in claiming a scientific basis and predictivity for simulation results is a necessity for high consequence modeling and simulation efforts where significant safety or financial risks exist.

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

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