Roadmap

This is the official planning page for the ARMI framework.

v0.5.0

2024, November-ish timeline

The focus of this release will be paying off our technical debt. Though some new features are in the works, most notably in assembly axial expansion and more detailed modeling of fuel pins.

Must Have

• HexGrid work
  • Location of pins in tips-up hexagonal grid is off by 60 degrees (1-2 Days)
  • Incorrect pitch for tips up sub-block pin grid (1-3 days)
• Clean up the overly-specific methods in ArmiObject
• Make EOC available in the DB (1-5 days)
• Make the Doppler constant param VOLUME_INTEGRATED
• Inherit XS Settings when creating a new XS ID
• Move dochelpers.py out of ARMI and into the /doc/ directory

Should Have

• Remove use of NumPy defunct jagged arrays and thus support Python 3.12
• Get code coverage over 90%. (0-5 days)
• Support for ex-core systems
• Reduce the trickiness of ArmiObject.setNumberDensities() by moving it to Component (1-3 days)

Nice-to Have

• Force parameters to have descriptions
• Force settings to have descriptions
• Support Python 3.12
• Support Python 3.13
• Remove the Operator from the Reactor (1-3 days)

v0.6.0

2025, March-ish timeline

v1.0.0

No firm timeline.

This is the big one. This release is meant to be the line in the sand where ARMI's API is made stable. And ARMI will be feature-rich without including the science or engineering calculations within ARMI.

Features

• Allow ARMI DBs to be opened without the App that created them
• Composites should be able to have children that are Composites
• Find and eliminate all hex assembly assumptions
• Materials redesign
• Meaningful assem Sort Order
• Matrix input on BP

Architecture

• Move Global Nuclides out of the global scope (1-10 days)
• Finish removing large and important things from the global scope
• Remove XML geom files completely
• Redesign of migration scripts
• De-homogenization of Number Densities
• Defining Custom material properties in the blueprints

Quality Assurance

• Remove ARMI's unit tests from the API, and create armi.testing
• Choose a type system: type hints, or NumPy docs or other
• Remove use of NumPy defunct jagged arrays and thus support Python 3.12
• Finally change Database3 to Database

User Interface

• Improved user experience with preparing input files and analyzing output files
  • Possibly along the lines of NEAMS Workbench or something web-based

Plugin Ecosystem

• Finish the ARMI OpenMC plugin
• ARMI input model for the BEAVRS benchmark
• ARMI plugin for INL's Deep Lynx