ADWP Advanced Simulation and Computing Program, ASC

The LANL CAVE Facility

The CAVE is a five-surface (left, front, right walls with floor and ceiling) display with 33 projectors lighting 43 million pixels in a 15x12x10-ft display area and a 3D environment. The visual representation enables researchers to detect trends, correlations, anomalies, and unexpected events in the data.

Visualization has long been an important tool for the understanding of complex data. The creation of a 3-D visual representation enables the highly developed human visual system to detect, among other things, trends, correlations, anomalies, and unexpected events in the data. Over the past several years, Los Alamos National Laboratory has invested in providing state-of-theart facilities and software tools to help scientists in the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program understand and explore their data. One such facility, the LANL CAVE, driven by a Linux cluster and equipped with an optical motion tracking system, is shown in the figure.

Researchers have used the facilities successfully to design, manufacture, and assemble complex mechanical models, such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead model. These models are developed and studied by a large number of people, often in different locations. Allowing these parties to interact with an unbuilt, virtual model has the potential to tremendously transform the way the Department of Energy (DOE) complex operates. Further, performing virtual analysis on complex models before they are built, where conflicts, alternative approaches, and optimizations can be identified early on, can yield enormous savings in both cost and time.

The HPC-5 RRW Visualization Team won a 2006-2007 Defense Programs Team Award of Excellence for their work on the RRW design. The team extended the capabilities of the Power Wall and CAVE visualization facilities by having demonstrations of virtual tooling design verification, virtual process development, virtual process walkdowns, and virtual training. The team's work contributed to a higher quality RRW design and to overall projected cost savings in the design and assembly process.