CRANE: A MOOSE-based Open Source Tool for Plasma Chemistry Applications

Abstract

Numerical simulation of plasma discharges is often performed by models developed in-house and coupling externally and separately written codes. The MOOSE (Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment) framework provides tools for quickly developing and coupling together software in a scalable framework, making it well-suited for plasma simulations. A new MOOSE application, CRANE (Chemical ReAction NEtwork), was developed in order to add an independent chemical kinetics application to the framework. In this work the capabilities of CRANE are detailed, including its use as a standalone solver for global plasma chemistry models. The capability of fully coupling applications in the MOOSE framework is also shown by compiling CRANE directly into the MOOSE-based plasma transport software Zapdos, showing the possibility to solve fully coupled drift-diffusion-reaction plasma chemistry problems. The code is open-source and available at the following url, https://github.com/lcpp-org/crane.

Estimation of mean electron energy in helium surface ionization waves on dielectric substrates

“…The solution to the set of rate equations dictated by equation ( 2) is accomplished using the open-source code network solver Chemical ReAction NEtworks (CRANE) [36]. CRANE has previously been through a verification and validation process when coupled to fluid codes for low to atmospheric pressure plasma discharges [37][38][39][40]. CRANE uses tabulated energy dependent reaction rates calculated from BOLSIG+ [41].…”