Frédéric Schwander

Penalization modeling of a limiter in the Tokamak edge plasma

An original penalization method is applied to model the interaction of magnetically confined plasma with limiter in the frame of a minimal transport model for ionic density and parallel momentum. The limiter is considered as a pure particle sink for the plasma and consequently the density and the momentum are enforced to be zero inside. Comparisons of the numerical results with one-dimensional analytical solutions show a very good agreement. In particular, the penalization scheme followed in this paper tends to ensure an almost sonic plasma condition at the plasma-obstacle interface, Bohm-like criterion, with relatively weak dependence on the target Mach number profile within the obstacle. The new system being solved in a periodic obstacle free domain, an efficient pseudo-spectral algorithm based on a Fast Fourier transform is also proposed, and associated with an exponential filtering of the unphysical oscillations due to Gibbs phenomenon. Finally, the efficiency of the method is illustrated by investigating the flow spreading from the plasma core to the Scrape-Off Layer at the wall in a two-dimensional system with one, then two neighboring limiters.

Numerical modelling for divertor design of the WEST device with a focus on plasma?wall interactions

In the perspective of operating tungsten monoblocks in WEST, the ongoing major upgrade of the Tore Supra tokamak, a dedicated modelling effort has been carried out to simulate the interaction between the edge plasma and the tungsten wall. A new transport code, SolEdge2D–EIRENE, has been developed with the ability to simulate the plasma up to the first wall. This is especially important for steady state operation, where thermal loads on all the plasma facing components, even remote from the plasma, are of interest. Moreover, main chamber tungsten sources are thought to dominate the contamination of the plasma core. We present here in particular new developments aimed at improving the description of the interface between the plasma and the wall, namely a way to treat sheath physics in a more faithful way using the output of 1D particle in cell simulations. Moreover, different models for prompt redeposition have been implemented and are compared. The latter is shown to play an important role in the balance between divertor and main chamber sources.

The TOKAM3X code for edge turbulence fluid simulations of tokamak plasmas in versatile magnetic geometries

The new code TOKAM3X simulates plasma turbulence in full torus geometry including the open field lines of the Scrape-off Layer (SOL) and the edge closed field lines region in the vicinity of the separatrix. Based on drift-reduced Braginskii equations, TOKAM3X is able to simulate both limited and diverted plasmas. Turbulence is flux driven by incoming particles from the core plasma and no scale separation between the equilibrium and the fluctuations is assumed so that interactions between large scale flows and turbulence are consistently treated. Based on a domain decomposition, specific numerical schemes are proposed using conservative finite-differences associated to a semi-implicit time advancement. The process computation is multi-threaded and based on MPI and OpenMP libraries. In this paper, fluid model equations are presented together with the proposed numerical methods. The code is verified using the manufactured solution technique and validated through documented simple experiments. Finally, first simulations of edge plasma turbulence in X-point geometry are also introduced in a JET geometry. Modelling of the turbulent cross-field transport in tokamak edge plasma.Development of a fluid code TOKAM3X to simulate turbulence.Code verification and validation.First X-point simulations in a JET-like geometry.

A penalization technique to model plasma facing components in a tokamak with temperature variations

To properly address turbulent transport in the edge plasma region of a tokamak, it is mandatory to describe the particle and heat outflow on wall components, using an accurate representation of the wall geometry. This is challenging for many plasma transport codes, which use a structured mesh with one coordinate aligned with magnetic surfaces. We propose here a penalization technique that allows modeling of particle and heat transport using such structured mesh, while also accounting for geometrically complex plasma-facing components. Solid obstacles are considered as particle and momentum sinks whereas ionic and electronic temperature gradients are imposed on both sides of the obstacles along the magnetic field direction using delta functions (Dirac). Solutions exhibit plasma velocities (M=1) and temperatures fluxes at the plasma-wall boundaries that match with boundary conditions usually implemented in fluid codes. Grid convergence and error estimates are found to be in agreement with theoretical results obtained for neutral fluid conservation equations. The capability of the penalization technique is illustrated by introducing the non-collisional plasma region expected by the kinetic theory in the immediate vicinity of the interface, that is impossible when considering fluid boundary conditions. Axisymmetric numerical simulations show the efficiency of the method to investigate the large-scale transport at the plasma edge including the separatrix and in realistic complex geometries while keeping a simple structured grid.

A hybrid discontinuous Galerkin method for tokamak edge plasma simulations in global realistic geometry

Progressing toward more accurate and more efficient numerical codes forthe simulation of transport and turbulence in the edge plasma of tokamaks,we propose in this work a new hybrid discontinous Galerkin solver. Basedon 2D advection-diffusion conservation equations for the ion density and theparticle flux in the direction parallel to the magnetic field, the code simulatesplasma transport in the poloidal section of tokamaks, including the open fieldlines of the Scrape-off Layer (SOL) and the closed field lines of the core re-gion. The spatial discretization is based on a high-order hybrid DG schemeon unstructured meshes, which provides an arbitrary high-order accuracywhile reducing considerably the number of coupled degrees of freedom witha local condensation process. A discontinuity sensor is employed to identifycritical elements and regularize the solution with the introduction of artificialdiffusion. Based on a finite-element discretization, not constrained by a flux-aligned mesh, the code is able to describe plasma facing components of anycomplex shape using Bohm boundary conditions and to simulate the plasmain versatile magnetic equilibria, possibly extended up to the center. Nu-merical tests using a manufacturated solution show appropriate convergenceorders when varying independently the number of elements or the degree ofinterpolation. Validation is performed by benchmarking the code with thewell-referenced edge transport code SOLEDGE2D (Bufferandet al.2013,2015 [1, 2]) in the WEST geometry. Final numerical experiments show thecapacity of the code to deal with low-diffusion solutions.

Parallel Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in edge plasma

In the scrape-off layer (SOL) of tokamaks, the flow acceleration due to the presence of limiter or divertor plates rises the plasma velocity in a sonic regime. These high velocities imply the presence of a strong shear between the SOL and the core of the plasma that can possibly trigger some parallel shear flow instability. The existence of these instabilities, denoted as parallel Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in some works [1, 2] have been investigated theoretically in [3] using a minimal model of electrostatic turbulence composed of a mass density and parallel velocity equations. This work showed that the edge plasma around limiters might indeed be unstable to this type of parallel shear flow instabilities. In this work, we perform 3D simulations of the same simple mathematical model to validate an original finite volume numerical method aimed to the numerical study of edge plasma. This method combines the use of triangular unstructured meshes in the poloidal section and structured meshes in the toroidal direction and is particularly suited to the representation of the real complex geometry of the vacuum chamber of a tokamak. The numerical results confirm that in agreement with the theoretical expectations as well as with other numerical methods, the sheared flows in the SOL are subject to parallel Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. However, the growth rate of these instabilities is low and these computations require both a sufficient spatial resolution and a long simulation time. This makes the simulation of parallel Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities a demanding benchmark.