Project ASTER (financed by ANR-CIS-2006)
Adaptive mhd Simulation of Tokamak Elms for iteR
Resume
The magneto-hydro-dynamic instability called ELM for Edge Localized Mode is commonly observed in the standard tokamak operating scenario. The energy losses the ELM will induce in ITER plasmas are a real concern. However, the current understanding of what sets the size of these ELM induced energy losses is extremely limited. No numerical simulations of the complete ELM instability, from its onset through its non-linear phase and its decay, exist in literature. Recently, encouraging results on the simulation of an ELM cycle have been obtained with the JOREK code developed at CEA but at reduced toroidal resolution. The JOREK code uses a fully implicit time evolution scheme in conjunction with the PaStiX sparse matrix library. In this project it is proposed to develop and implement methods to improve the MHD simulation code to enable high-resolution MHD simulations of ELMs. The ELM simulations are urgently needed to improve our understanding of ELMs and to evaluate possible mechanism to control the energy losses. The improvements include adaptive mesh refinement, a robust numerical MHD scheme and refinable cubic Hermite finite elements. These developments need to be consistent with the implicit time evolution scheme and the PaStiX solver. The implicit scheme is essential due to the large variety of time scales in the MHD simulations. The new methods will be implemented and evaluated in the code FluidBox, developed by the ScAlApplix team and the JOREK code to optimize the exchange of expertise on numerical methods and MHD simulations.
The project is a collaboration between the Departement de Recherche sur la Fusion Controlee (DRFC, CEA/Cadarache) and the Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI) and Mathématiques Appliquées de Bordeaux (MAB) at the University of Bordeaux I.
People
Remi Abgrall Mathématiques Appliquées de Bordeaux (MAB), Université Bordeaux I Marina Becoulet Departement de Recherches sur la Fusion Controlee, Association Euratom-CEA Cadarache Olivier Coulaud LaBRI (UMR 5800), Bordeaux Pascal Henon INRIA (UR FUTURS), Bordeaux Robin Huart Mathématiques Appliquées de Bordeaux (MAB), Université Bordeaux I Guido Huysmans Departement de Recherches sur la Fusion Controlee, Association Euratom-CEA Cadarache (coordinator) Boniface N'Konga Mathématiques Appliquées de Bordeaux (MAB), Université Bordeaux I Stanislas Pamela Departement de Recherches sur la Fusion Controlee, Association Euratom-CEA Cadarache Pierre Ramet LaBRI (UMR 5800), Université Bordeaux I Guillaume Latu Partner from Université Strasbourg I Emiel van der Plas Departement de Recherches sur la Fusion Controlee, Association Euratom-CEA Cadarache Postdoc LaBRI LaBRI (UMR 5800), Université Bordeaux I