Welcome to VirtualLab’s documentation!

VirtualLab is a modular platform which enables the user to run simulations of physical laboratory experiments, i.e., their ‘virtual counterparts’.

The motivation for creating a virtual laboratory is manyfold, for example:

• Planning and optimisation of physical experiments.

• Ability to directly compare experimental and simulation data, useful to better understand both physical and virtual methods.

• Augment sparse experimental data with simulation data for increased insight.

• Generating synthetic data to train machine learning models.

The software is mostly written in python, and is fully parametrised such that it can be run in ‘batch mode’, i.e., non-interactively, via the command line. This is in order to facilitate automation and so that many virtual experiments can be conducted in parallel.

Due to the modularity of the platform, by nature, VirtualLab is continually expanding. The bulk of the ‘virtual experiments’ currently included are carried out in the FE solver Code_Aster. However, there are also modules to simulate X-ray computed tomography, irradiation damage of materials and electromagnetics.

The pre and post processing is carried out using various software, for example:

• SALOME: Mesh generation

• Cad2Vox: Mesh voxelisation

• CIL: CT reconstruction

• SuRVoS: Image segmentation

• iso2mesh: Image-based meshing

• PyTorch: Data analytics

• ParaVis: Data visualisation

While this platform has been written for use from the command line, some capabilities have been included to use GUIs offered by the various software for debugging and training.

Image Name	Docker Pull	Build Status	Software	Version
vl_manager	docker://ibsim/virtuallab		VirtualLab	22.0.1
vl_paramak	docker://ibsim/vl_paramak		Paramak	0.8.6
vl_openmc	docker://ibsim/vl_openmc		OpenMC	0.13.2
vl_paraview	docker://ibsim/vl_paraview		ParaView	5.11
vl_modelib_v1	docker://ibsim/vl_modelib_v1		MoDELib	1.0
vl_iso2mesh	docker://ibsim/vl_iso2mesh		iso2mesh	1.9.6
vl_cad2vox	docker://ibsim/vl_cad2vox		CAD2Vox	1.26
vl_gvxr	docker://ibsim/vl_gvxr		gVXR	2.0.2
vl_cil	docker://ibsim/vl_cil		CIL	22.1.0
vl_salomemeca	docker://ibsim/vl_salomemeca		Salome-Meca	2019.0.3
vl_aster_v14_6	docker://ibsim/vl_aster_v14_6		Code_Aster	14.6
vl_coms_test	docker://ibsim/vl_coms_test		Utils	1.0
vl_monolith	docker://ibsim/virtuallab_monolith		Various	N/A