pyvale 2026.1.1

Your virtual engineering lab: An all-in-one package for sensor simulation, uncertainty quantification, sensor placement optimisation and simulation calibration or validation.

pyvale

The python validation engine (pyvale) is your virtual engineering laboratory: An all-in-one package for sensor uncertainty quantification simulations, experimental design/sensor placement optimisation and simulation calibration/validation. Used to simulate experimental data from an input multi-physics simulation by explicitly modelling sensors with realistic uncertainties. Useful for experimental design, sensor placement optimisation, testing simulation validation metrics and virtually testing digital shadows/twins.

We are actively developing dedicated tools for simulation and uncertainty quantification of imaging sensors including digital image correlation (DIC) and infra-red thermography (IRT). Check out the documentation to get started with some of our examples.

Quick Demo: Simulating Point Sensors

Here we demonstrate how pyvale can be used to simulate thermocouples and strain gauges applied to a MOOSE thermo-mechanical simulation of a fusion divertor armour heatsink. The figures below show visualisations of the virtual thermocouple and strain gauge locations on the simualtion mesh as well as time traces for each sensor over a series of simulated experiments.

The code to run the simulated experiments and produce the output shown here comes from this example. You can find more examples and details of pyvale python API in the pyvale documentation.

Visualisation of the thermocouple locations.	Visualisation of the strain gauge locations.

Thermocouple time traces over a series of simulated experiments.	Strain gauge time traces over a series of simulated experiments.

Quick Install

pyvale can be installed from pypi:

pip install pyvale

We recommend installing pyvale into a virtual environment of your choice as pyvale requires python 3.11. If you need help setting up your virtual environment and installing pyvale head over to the installation guide in our docs.

Contributors

The Computer Aided Validation Team at UKAEA:

• Lloyd Fletcher (ScepticalRabbit), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Joel Hirst (JoelPhys), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Lorna Sibson (lornasibson), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Megan Sampson (meganasampson), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Michael Atkinson (mikesmic), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Adel Tayeb (3adelTayeb), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Alex Marsh (alexmarsh2), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Rory Spencer (fusmatrs), UK Atomic Energy Authority
• John Charlton (coolmule0), UK Atomic Energy Authority