国际热核实验反应堆项目涉及35个国家合作建立发电实验，这可能导致通过核融合产生的可再生能源，核融合是潜在的革命性电源。

To make informed design decisions on an experimental megaproject, Bentley Systems and London-based Brigantium Engineering helped teleport the international engineering team responsible for ITER into its infrastructure digital twin using Bentley Synchro 4D, Unreal Engine for Oculus, iTwin and NVIDIA Omniverse. Now, teams can experience their designs from within the model as they make constructability decisions.

伦敦工程咨询公司Brigantium和4D Synchro专家Brigantium的董事总经理Lynton Sutton说：“目前，我们真的专注于反应堆的建造。”

自2013年以来，在法国南部的卡达拉奇技术研究中心（Cadarache Technology Research Center）建设，据估计，由于其实验性质和纯粹的规模，估计总建筑成本在210亿至350亿美元之间。它的中央电磁阀计划高59英尺，重1,000吨。它正在从圣地亚哥的普通原子设施中运送到设施中。2月，螺线管的第一部分到达ITER站点。该实验旨在证明融合作为实用程序规模，无碳的能源的可行性。

世界上最大的融合反应堆

The project is based around the world’s largest tokamak, a doughnut-shaped fusion reactor that uses a magnetic field to confine plasma to that shape. The reactor being built for ITER isn’t like conventional nuclear reactors wherein the nucleus of an atom is split to release tremendous amounts of energy. ITER’s nuclear fusion takes multiple hydrogen nuclei and uses intense heat to fuse them together. This process releases a great amount energy that could, someday, replace nuclear fission and other methods of conventional power generation. Nuclear fusion reactions in smaller experiments have only been sustained for very brief amounts of time, and there’s no guarantee ITER or future fusion efforts will be successful in creating sustained fusion reactions that can be used for consistent power generation.

Brigantium一直使用Bentley的同步4D来模拟和预测反应堆的构建。Recently, they have also been collaborating with Bentley’s Innovation Lab to explore extended use of iTwin, LumenRT, NVIDIA Omniverse, Unreal Engine, Oculus Quest 2, and Azure remote rendering with HoloLens 2, to see if they can integrate model data into an immersive and lifelike virtual experience. The end goal is to have the reactor models accessible through a range of means, including web browsers, workstations, tablets, and virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets. “This kind of experience would allow people from all corners of the globe to experience being ‘inside’ the Tokamak Complex,” Sutton says. “This could unlock great advantages for office-based engineers and contractors, particularly when access to the worksite is restricted.”

迭代is a project that brings together countries of diverse ideologies to manufacture components and ship them to a single location. “It is like a reverse Tower of Babel,” says Laban Coblentz, head of communications for ITER.

完成后，反应堆将重21,000吨，并具有62,000英里的尼伯丁丁和尼伯族超导电线，由六个迭代签名国家的制造商提供：中国，日本，韩国，欧盟，俄罗斯和美国，俄罗斯和美国，迭代’s central solenoid—the 1,100-ton electromagnet in the center of the machine—must be strong enough to contain a force equivalent to twice the thrust of a Space Shuttle launch. About 45,000 amps of electricity will flow through the central solenoid’s wires, generating a magnetic field that steers and shapes an energy-producing plasma torus. The cryostat base, which has already been installed, weighs 1,377 tons.

Brigantium和Bentley现在正在实施和扩展Iter Digital Twin。萨顿说：“这项技术将使伊特（Iter）的工程师和利益相关者能够体验未来，并在实际规模上'内部'内部'内部'。”“它对该项目具有巨大的潜力；我们认为，这将显着改善工程和建筑部门以及与外部承包商的沟通。”

科先生补充说,ITER的组件是否成r they come from San Diego or Shanghai, must fit together within tolerances of less than a millimeter due to the delicate nature of the experiment. Components are manufactured on multiple continents, shipped through marine environments with different temperatures and pressures, and virtual planning and coordination have been key for ensuring they will be assembled with the required level of precision.

组装了低温恒温器基础和迭代中央电磁阀第一部分。
图片由伊特尔（Iter）提供

许多文化，一种语言

“That shared language is either just mathematics or CAD or shared software,” Coblentz said. The digital twin “is helpful because every one of the countries involved had their own roadmap … toward making fusion feasible.”

2月份来自普通原子的中央电磁阀部分的高度为7英尺，直径为14英尺，重250,000磅。该模块是六个几乎相同的物品之一，它们将彼此堆叠以构成构成中央电磁阀。ITER反应堆的大部分分量被运送到最近的地中海港口，然后在修改后的道路和桥梁上运到现场65英里，这些道路和桥梁已加强以应对负载。

萨顿说：“仅用于组装这些组件的工具的设计和工程是100％定制的。”组成低温恒温器的56件，包括30米的低温固定基盘，是在印度哈希拉的，并运送到ITER的，由印度工程师监督的德国焊工在现场将其焊接在一起，所有这些都在法国核核的框架下工作。法规，例如，有多少手在此大型项目中工作。

The Long Road to ITER

The idea of building and testing a circular tokamak as a configuration for a nuclear fusion reactor first gained traction back in the 1960s. The genesis of the ITER project dates back to the Geneva Superpower Summit in 1985, where the idea of a collaborative international effort to develop nuclear fusion energy for peaceful purposes was raised by General Sec. Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, who proposed the concept to President Ronald Reagan.

ITER设计的设计在2001年得到其成员的批准。中国和韩国于2003年加入该项目，随后是2005年的印度。2013年，在法国南部占地445英亩土地之后，建设始于2013年。

“In something of this complexity it would have been traditional to give the entire design to one company—a Siemens, a Wood or a Jacobs,” Coblentz says. “Even so, the procurement would’ve been complex,” he adds. “But the ITER project itself was based on bringing together countries of unlike ideologies to actually make components and ship them to a single location.”

A Constructability Challenge

Brigantium’s 4D model of the reactor has to be easily accessible and intuitive to use, not only because it will inform engineers and stakeholders scattered among different countries, but also because personnel on and off the site need a straightforward way to communicate and identify issues.

“You have the high quality polished, NVIDIA Omniverse renderings and animations,” says Greg Demchak, director of Bentley’s Digital Innovation Lab. “That gets closer to photorealistic rendering versus the typical CAD output that just comes out of CATIA.”

Demchak said that newly developed prototypes for large-model streaming were built on top of Unreal Engine, and stream model geometry over Wi-Fi to the Oculus headset for stakeholders to view. They found that VR was a natural way to convey the state of the project to stakeholders and construction teams.

“There’s a range of where photorealism is necessary on that dimension for the construction delivery team versus the general public or stakeholders,” he says. The constructability problems Brigantium is trying to solve with the ITER construction team currently involve the assembly sequence inside the reactor. “The new [benefit for the team] is to use 3D immersive visualization for the vessel assembly, where the problem is not something that can be conveyed with 2D plans,” Demchak says.

萨顿说，反应器内部的多个分阶段允许并行操作。复杂的调度允许在反应堆的表面和壁上同时安装组件。“这是一个多平台问题。您不能将其写在白板上。”他说。完成计划的2025年。