HELIOS

HELIOS Overview

Helios

HELIOS is a 1-D radiation-hydrodynamics code designed to study the hydrodynamic evolution of radiating plasmas. It can be used to study the evolution of planar, cylindrical, or spherical plasmas heated by laser beams or by external radiation sources. In designing HELIOS, a strong emphasis has been placed on making it easy to use. It features a user-friendly graphical interface for setting up problems and monitoring the progress of the simulation.

Sample uses of HELIOS include simulating the dynamics of:
  • laser-produced plasmas
  • discharge-produced plasmas (z-pinches)
  • radiatively-heated plasmas
  • shock propagation in materials
HELIOS-CR is an enhanced version of HELIOS which includes the option to simulate the dynamics of non-Local-Thermodynamic-Equilibrium (non-LTE) plasmas using an inline Collisional-Radiative (C-R) model.
HELIOS and HELIOS-CR have been developed using cross-platform C++ user interface (UI) software. They also utilize the OpenGL graphics application framework. The use of cross-platform UI software and OpenGL allows HELIOS/HELIOS-CR to run natively on:
    • MS Windows (7 or newer)
    • Linux (kernel 2.6.32 or newer)
    • Mac OSX (10.7 or newer)

Only 64-bit platforms are supported.

HELIOS and HELIOS-CR interact with other Prism codes that are used in the analysis of laboratory plasma experiments. These include:
    • HydroPLOT, a plotting tool that displays a wide variety of results from HELIOS simulations.
    • VISRAD, a 3-D view factor code used to design experiments at the OMEGA and NIF laser facilities and the Z pulsed-power z-pinch facility. VISRAD includes a CAD capability for setting up targets and pointing lasers, and is used to compute the radiation environment throughout 3-D target systems. For any given surface element in its grid, VISRAD can supply time- and frequency-dependent incident flux data that HELIOS can use in simulating the effects of an external radiation source.
    • SPECT3D, a collisional-radiative spectral analysis and imaging package. Results for time-dependent plasma conditions predicted by HELIOS are post-processed by SPECT3D to produce images and spectra that can be compared with experimental measurements.

HELIOS major features...