No Arabic abstract
The present paper deals with the surface heat flux estimation with thermocouples (TC) and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) embedded in the plasma facing components (PFC) of the WEST tokamak. A 2D heat transfer model combined with the conjugate gradient method (CGM) and the adjoint state is used to estimate the plasma heat flux deposited on the PFC. The plasma heat flux is characterized by the time evolution of its amplitude and spatial shape on the target (heat flux decay length $lambda^t_q$, power spreading in the private flux region $S^t$ and the strike point location $x_0$). As a first step, five ohmic pulses have been investigated with different magnetic configuration and divertor X-point height varying from 44 to 68 mm from the surface. Despite an outboard shift, the relative displacements of the outer strike point as well as the heat flux decay length derived from the TC/FBG systems are consistent with the magnetic equilibrium reconstruction.
The XGC1 edge gyrokinetic code is used for a high fidelity prediction for the width of the heat-flux to divertor plates in attached plasma condition. The simulation results are validated against the empirical scaling $lambda_q propto B_P^{-gamma}$ obtained from present tokamak devices, where $lambda_q$ is the divertor heat-flux width mapped to the outboard midplane and $gamma_q=1.19$ as defined by T. Eich et al. [Nucl. Fusion 53 (2013) 093031], and $B_P$ is the magnitude of the poloidal magnetic field at outboard midplane separatrix surface. This empirical scaling predicts $lambda_q leq 1mm$ when extrapolated to ITER, which would require operation with very high separatrix densities $(n_{sep}/n_{Greenwald} > 0.6)$ in the Q=10 scenario to achieve semi-detached plasma operation and high radiative fractions leading to acceptable divertor power fluxes. XGC1 predicts, however, that $lambda_q$ for ITER is over 5 mm, suggesting that operation in the ITER Q=10 scenario with acceptable divertor power loads could be obtained over a wider range of plasma separatrix densities and radiative fractions. The physics reason behind this difference is, according to the XGC1 results, that while the ion magnetic drift contribution to the divertor heat-flux width is wider in the present tokamaks, the turbulent electron contribution is wider in ITER. A high current C-Mod discharge is found to be in a mixed regime: While the heat-flux width by the ion neoclassical magnetic drift is still wider than the turbulent electron heat-flux width, the heat-flux magnitude is dominated by the narrower electron heat-flux.
The distribution of particles and power to plasma-facing components is of key importance in the design of next-generation fusion devices. Power and particle decay lengths have been measured in a number of MAST L-mode and H-mode discharges in order to determine their parametric dependencies, by fitting power and particle flux profiles measured by divertor Langmuir probes, to a convolution of an exponential decay and a Gaussian function. In all discharges analysed, it is found that exponential decay lengths mapped to the midplane are mostly dependent on separatrix electron density and plasma current (or parallel connection length). The widths of the convolved Gaussian functions have been used to derive an approximate diffusion coefficient, which is found to vary from 1m2/s to 7m2/s, and is systematically lower in H-mode compared with L-mode.
Advanced divertor configurations modify the magnetic geometry of the diverter to achieve a combination of strong magnetic flux expansion, increased connection length and higher divertor volume - to improve detachment stability, neutral/impurity confinement and heat-channel broadening. In this paper, we discuss the modification of the Flux-Coordinate Independent (FCI) turbulence code GRILLIX to treat generalised magnetic geometry, to allow for the investigation of the effect of magnetic geometry on turbulent structures in the edge and SOL. The development of grids and parallel operators from numerically-defined magnetic equilibria is discussed, as is the application of boundary conditions via penalisation, with the finite-width method generalised to treat complex non-conformal boundaries. Initial testing of hyperbolic (advection) and parabolic (diffusion) test cases is presented for the Snowflake scenario.
In a recent paper (El Omari and Le Guer, IJHMT, 53, 2010) we have investigated mixing and heat transfer enhancement in a mixer composed of two circular rods maintained vertically in a cylindrical tank. The rods and tank can rotate around their revolution axes while their surfaces were maintained at a constant temperature. In the present study we investigate the differences in the thermal mixing process arising from the utilization of a constant heat flux as a boundary condition. The study concerns a highly viscous fluid with a high Prandtl number $Pr = 10,000$ for which this chaotic mixer is suitable. Chaotic flows are obtained by imposing temporal modulations of the rotational velocities of the walls. By solving numerically the flow and energy equations, we studied the effects of different stirring protocols and flow configurations on the efficiency of mixing and heat transfer. For this purpose, we used different statistical indicators as tools to characterize the evolution of the fluid temperature and its homogenization. Fundamental differences have been reported between these two modes of heating or cooling: while the mixing with an imposed temperature results in a homogeneous temperature field, with a fixed heat flux we observe a constant difference between the maximal and minimal temperatures that establish in the fluid; the extent of this difference is governed by the efficiency of the mixing protocol.
The guiding-center kinetic neoclassical transport code, XGC0, [C.S. Chang et. al, Phys. Plasmas 11, 2649 (2004)] is used to compute the heat fluxes and the heat-load width in the outer divertor plates of Alcator C-Mod and DIII-D tokamaks. The dependence of the width of heat-load fluxes on neoclassical effects, neutral collisions and anomalous transport is investigated using the XGC0 code. The XGC0 code includes realistic X-point geometry, a neutral source model, the effects of collisions, and a diffusion model for anomalous transport. It is observed that width of the XGC0 neoclassical heat-load is approximately inversely proportional to the total plasma current $I_{rm p}$. The scaling of the width of the divertor heat-load with plasma current is examined for an Alcator C-Mod discharge and four DIII-D discharges. The scaling of the divertor heat-load width with plasma current is found to be weaker in the Alcator C-Mod discharge compared to scaling found in the DIII-D discharges. The effect of neutral collisions on the $1/I_{rm p}$ scaling of heat-load width is shown not to be significant. Although inclusion of poloidally uniform anomalous transport results in a deviation from the $1/I_{rm p}$ scaling, the inclusion of the anomalous transport that is driven by ballooning-type instabilities results in recovering the neoclassical $1/I_{rm p}$ scaling. The Bohm or Gyro-Bohm scalings of anomalous transport does not strongly affect the dependence of the heat-load width on plasma current. The inclusion of anomalous transport, in general, results in widening the width of neoclassical divertor heat-load and enhances the neoclassical heat-load fluxes on the divertor plates. Understanding heat transport in the tokamak scrape-off layer plasmas is important for strengthening the basis for predicting divertor conditions in ITER.