Simulation of Plasma Disruptions for HL-2M with the DINA Code

Plasma disruption is often an unavoidable aspect of tokamak operations. It may cause severe damage to in-vessel components such as the vacuum vessel conductors, the first wall and the divertor target plates. Two types of disruption, the hot-plasma vertical displacement event and the major disruption with a cold-plasma vertical displacement event, are simulated by the DINA code for HL-2M. The time evolutions of the plasma current, the halo current, the magnetic axis, the minor radius, the elongation as well as the electromagnetic force and eddy currents on the vacuum vessel during the thermal quench and the current quench are investigated. By comparing the electromagnetic forces before and after the disruption, we find that the disruption causes great damage to the vacuum vessel conductors. In addition, the hot-plasma vertical displacement event is more dangerous than the major disruption with the cold-plasma vertical displacement event.

Coupled thermal-mechanical analysis of two ITER-like first wall mockups under heat shock of plasma disruptions

The first wall of the fusion reactor is a plasma-facing component and is a key link to maintain the integrity of structure during thermal shock induced by plasma disruptions. Be and W/Cu functionally graded materials are two kinds of important plas- ma-facing materials （PFM） of first wall in fusion reactor currently. Previous researches seldom comparatively evaluated the normal servicing and heat shock resistance performance of first walls with those two kinds of PFMs. And also there lacks cou- pled thermal/mechanical analysis on the heat shock process in consideration of multiple thermal/mechanical phenomena, such as material melting, solidification, evaporation, etc., which is significant to further understand the heat shock damage mecha- nism of the first wall with different PFMs. With the aim of learning more detailed mechanical mechanism of thermal shock damage and then improving the thermal shock resistance performance of different first wall designs, the coupled ther- mal/mechanical response of two typical ITER-like first walls with PFM of Be and functionally graded W-Cu respectively un- der the heat shock of 1 2 GW/m2 are computed by the finite element method. Special considerations of elastic-plastic defor- mation, material melting, and solidification are included in numerical models and methods. The mechanical response behaviors of different structures and materials under the normal servicing operation as well as plasma disruption conditions are analyzed and investigated comparatively. The results reveal that heat is mainly deposited on the PFM layer in thc high energy shock pulse induced by plasma disruptions, resulting in complex thermal stress change as well as mechanical itTeversible damage of thermal elastic and plastic expansion, contraction and yielding. Compared with the first wall with Be PFM, which mitigates the damages from heat shock at most only in the PFM layer with cost of whole PFM layer plastic yielding, the first wall with graded W-Cu PFM is demonstrated to be possessed both of higher heat shock resistance performance and normal servicing performance, provided its material gradient and cooling capacity are well optimized under practical loading conditions.

Investigating the physics of disruptions with real-time tomography at JET

As JET is developing and testing operational scenarios for higher fusion performance,an increase in pulse disruptivity is being observed.On a deeper analysis,we find that several radiative phenomena play an active role in determining the outcome of the pulse.The analysis is enabled by the use of real-time tomography based on the bolometer diagnostic.Even though plasma tomography is an inverse problem,we use machine learning to train a forward model that provides the radiation profile directly,based on a single matrix multiplication step.This model is used to investigate radiative phenomena including sawtooth crashes,ELMs and MARFE,and their relationship to the radiated power in different regions of interest.In particular,we use realtime tomography to monitor the core region,and to throw an alarm whenever core radiation exceeds a certain threshold.Our results suggest that this measure alone can anticipate a significant fraction of disruptions in the JET baseline scenario.

Numerical Simulation Approaches to Evaluating the Electromagnetic Loads on the EAST Vacuum Vessel

Numerical simulation approaches are developed to compute the electromagnetic forces on the EAST vacuum vessel during major disruptions and vertical displacement events, with the halo current also considered. The finite element model built with ANSYS includes the vacuum vessel, the plasma facing components and their support structure, and the toroidal and poloidal field coils. The numerical methods are explained to convince of its validity. The eddy current induced by the magnetic flux variation and the conducting current caused by the halo current are also presented for discussion. The electromagnetic forces resulting from the numerical simulation are proven to be useful for structure design optimization. Similar methods can be applied in the upgrades of the EAST device.

A Moving Coordinate Numerical Method for Analyses of Electromagneto-Mechanical Coupled Behavior of Structures in a Strong Magnetic Field Aiming at Application to Tokamak Structures

Analysis of the electromagneto-mechanical coupling effect contributes greatly to the high accuracy estimation of the EM load of many EM devices, such as a tokamak structure during plasma disruption. This paper presents a method for the numerical analysis of the electromagnetomechanical coupling effect on the basis of Maxwell＇s equations in the Lagrangian description and staggered load transfer scheme, which can treat the coupled behaviors of magnetic damping and magnetic stiffness effects at the same time. Codes were developed based on the ANSYS development platform and were applied to solve two typical numerical examples： the TEAM Problem 16 and dynamic behavior analysis of a shallow arch under electromagnetic force. The good consistency of numerical results and experimental data demonstrates the validity and accuracy of the proposed method and the related numerical codes.

Numerical Analysis of Electromagneto-Mechanical Coupling Dynamic Response of a Typical Tokomak Structure

In an effort to simulate the dynamic behavior of a non-ferromagnetic conducting structure with consideration of the magnetic damping effect, a finite element code is developed, which is based on the reduced vector potential （At） method, the step-by-step integration algorithm and a time-partitioned strategy. An additional term is introduced to the conventional governing equations of eddy current problems to take into account the velocity-induced electric field corre- sponding to the magnetic damping effect. The TEAM-16 benchmark problem is simulated using the proposed method in conjunction with the commercial code ANSYS. The simulation results indicate that the proposed method has better simulation accuracy, especially in the presence of a high-intensity external magnetic field.

Suppression of runaway current by electrode biasing and limiter biasing on J-TEXT

The avoidance of runaway electrons(REs) generated during plasma disruption is of great concern for the safe operation of tokamak devices.Experimental study on the suppression of runaway current by electrode biasing(EB) and limiter biasing(LB) has been performed on the J-TEXT tokamak,which could be an alternative way to suppress the runaway current.The experimental results show that the higher the voltage value,the smaller the runaway current in both EB and LB experiments.The runaway current can be completely suppressed at an electrode biased voltage of +450 V and a limiter biased voltage of +300 V.The comparison of the energy spectra during the runaway plateau phase shows that the maximum energy max(E_(RE)) and radiation temperature T_(HXR)hard x-rays(HXRs)are significantly reduced after the application of +200 V limiter biased voltage.The electric field generated by the biased voltage may be the key factor to suppress the runaway current,and the measured radial electric field increases obviously after the voltage is applied.This may result in an increase in the loss of REs to realize the suppression of runaway current.

An approach to explore the eddy currents of the new type divertor for EAST device using ANSYS code

An effective method for eddy current calculation has been developed for EAST’s new divertor by using ANSYS.A 3D model of a double null divertor for the EAST device was built to evaluate eddy currents and electromagnetic(EM)forces on these components.The main input to the model is the plasma current and poloidal field coil currents,which are loaded into the model using experimental data measured from the EAST discharges.These currents generate magnetic fields that match those producing an EAST discharge,and the time variation of these fields produces the eddy currents in the divertors,along with from the resulting EM forces.In addition,the first 10 time steps were discussed for the eddy current generation and changing trend.It indicates that a static analysis before a transient mode start can solve the eddy current origination in the initial time steps.With this method,the EM transient response of EAST’s new divertor can be predicted based on ANSYS simulations.Furthermore,the method is also an effective approach to estimate the EM results for the in-vessel components of a fusion reactor during a disruption.