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At least 235 records · Page 13

Integrated model predictions on the impact of substrate damage on gas dynamics during ITER burning-plasma operations

Divertor design and choice of plasma-facing materials (PFM) will be essential to the success of next-generation fusion reactors as they operate under more powerful scenarios. Understanding and controlling interactions between the plasma and PFM is essential to making these choices. Within these plasma–material interactions and especially in tungsten (W), the interplay between the most abundant plasma species (hydrogen isotopes and helium, He) with the wall material alters fuel retention. However, this interplay is yet to be sufficiently understood to confidently project fuel retention levels to future fusion devices. The paper presents a series of integrated simulations of fusion plasmas and their interaction with tungsten. Specifically, this study assesses the impact of He plasma pre-exposure on hydrogenic species retention during 100 s of burning plasma operations (BPO) in ITER. Multiple pre-exposure scenarios are considered, including sub-surface damage resulting from exposures in the linear device PISCES and from early ITER He-operation. The predictions from these consecutive He-BPO exposures show that fuel content and spatial distribution in the material are largely determined by the He-induced damage, as manifest in: (i) changes in surface temperature expected during BPO have little effect on fuel retention in the presence of He-induced damage; (ii) gas content stabilizes quickly in substrates pre-exposed in PISCES, at levels set by the concentration of pre-existing vacancies, while it continues to increase in substrates initially pristine or pre-exposed to ITER He plasmas; (iii) the presence of He and He–V clusters in the near-surface region locally increases hydrogenic retention, but decreases its permeation; this results in hydrogenic species that remain closer to the surface in pre-damaged substrates, while the bulk content is higher for initially pristine cases. In summary, the interaction and binding of D and T with the pre-existing He–V clusters modifies retention and permeation of hydrogen species during ITER BPO.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Disruptive neoclassical tearing mode seeding in DIII-D with implications for ITER

New studies identify the critical parameters and physics governing disruptive neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) onset. An m/n = 2/1 mode in DIII-D that begins to grow robustly after a seeding event (edge localized mode ELM or sawtooth precursor and crash) causes the mode rotation to drop close to the plasma's Er = 0 rest frame; this condition opens the stabilizing ion-polarization current 'gate' and destabilizes an otherwise marginally stable NTM. Our new experimental and theoretical insights and novel toroidal theory-based modeling are benchmarked and scalable to ITER and other future experiments. Here, the nominal ITER rotation at q = 2 is found to be stabilizing ('gate closed') except for MHD-induced transients that could 'open the gate'. Extrapolating from the DIII-D ITER baseline scenario (IBS) discharges, MHD transients are much more likely to destabilize problematic robustly growing 2/1 NTMs in ITER; this makes predictions of seeding and control of both ELMs and sawteeth imperative for more than just minimizing divertor pulsed-heat loading.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Quasi-linear toroidal simulations of resonant magnetic perturbations in eight ITER H-mode scenarios

Abstract Both linear and quasi-linear aspects of the plasma response to the resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) field are numerically investigated for various H-mode scenarios in ITER, covering the pre-fusion power operation and the fusion power operation phases. Linear response computations for eight ITER scenarios, with varying plasma current and toroidal magnetic field, reveal that the best coil current phasing for controlling the type-I edge localized modes (ELMs) scales roughly linearly with the edge safety factor. The coil phasing is defined as the relative toroidal phase of the coil currents between different rows, for a given toroidal harmonic. Quasi-linear initial value simulation, which is the focus of the present study, shows that application of the n = 3 ( n is the toroidal mode number) RMP field has a minimum side effect on the plasma core momentum confinement but potentially a large effect on the global particle transport. Generally, the RMP field with the best (worst) coil phasing for ELM control produces the strongest (weakest) effect on the plasma edge flow and the overall density. This robustly holds for all eight ITER scenarios. Consequently, in order to minimize the RMP induced side effects while achieving ELM control (suppression) in ITER, a compromise is necessary in choosing the coil current configuration.

Physics↗

Time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulations of the tokamak plasma boundary for model predictive control using SINDy *

Abstract Time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulations have been used to identify reduced models with the sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) method and develop model-predictive control of the boundary plasma state using main ion gas puff actuation. A series of gas actuation sequences are input into SOLPS-ITER to produce a dynamic response in upstream and divertor plasma quantities. The SINDy method is applied to identify reduced linear and nonlinear models for the electron density at the outboard midplane n e , s e p O M P and the electron temperature at the outer divertor T e , s e p d i v . Note that T e , s e p d i v is not necessarily the peak value of T e along the divertor. The identified reduced models are interpretable by construction (i.e. not black box), and have the form of coupled ordinary differential equations. Despite significant noise in T e , s e p d i v , the reduced models can be used to predict the response over a range of actuation levels to a maximum deviation of 0.5% in n e , s e p O M P and 5%–10% in T e , s e p d i v for the cases considered. Model retraining using time history data triggered by a preset error threshold is also demonstrated. A model predictive control strategy for nonlinear models is developed and used to perform feedback control of a SOLPS-ITER simulation to produce a setpoint trajectory in n e , s e p O M P using the integrated plasma simulator framework. The developed techniques are general and can be applied to time-dependent data from other boundary simulations or experimental data. Ongoing work is extending the approach to model identification and control for divertor detachment, which will present transient nonlinear behavior from impurity seeding, including realistic latency and synthetic diagnostic signals derived from the full SOLPS-ITER output.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Overview of ASDEX upgrade results in view of ITER and DEMO

Experiments on ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) in 2021 and 2022 have addressed a number of critical issues for ITER and EU DEMO. A major objective of the AUG programme is to shed light on the underlying physics of confinement, stability, and plasma exhaust in order to allow reliable extrapolation of results obtained on present day machines to these reactor-grade devices. Concerning pedestal physics, the mitigation of edge localised modes (ELMs) using resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) was found to be consistent with a reduction of the linear peeling-ballooning stability threshold due to the helical deformation of the plasma. Conversely, ELM suppression by RMPs is ascribed to an increased pedestal transport that keeps the plasma away from this boundary. Candidates for this increased transport are locally enhanced turbulence and a locked magnetic island in the pedestal. The enhanced D-alpha (EDA) and quasi-continuous exhaust (QCE) regimes have been established as promising ELM-free scenarios. Here, the pressure gradient at the foot of the H-mode pedestal is reduced by a quasi-coherent mode, consistent with violation of the high-n ballooning mode stability limit there. This is suggestive that the EDA and QCE regimes have a common underlying physics origin. In the area of transport physics, full radius models for both L- and H-modes have been developed. These models predict energy confinement in AUG better than the commonly used global scaling laws, representing a large step towards the goal of predictive capability. A new momentum transport analysis framework has been developed that provides access to the intrinsic torque in the plasma core. In the field of exhaust, the X-Point Radiator (XPR), a cold and dense plasma region on closed flux surfaces close to the X-point, was described by an analytical model that provides an understanding of its formation as well as its stability, i.e., the conditions under which it transitions into a deleterious MARFE with the potential to result in a disruptive termination. With the XPR close to the divertor target, a new detached divertor concept, the compact radiative divertor, was developed. Here, the exhaust power is radiated before reaching the target, allowing close proximity of the X-point to the target. No limitations by the shallow field line angle due to the large flux expansion were observed, and sufficient compression of neutral density was demonstrated. With respect to the pumping of non-recycling impurities, the divertor enrichment was found to mainly depend on the ionisation energy of the impurity under consideration. In the area of MHD physics, analysis of the hot plasma core motion in sawtooth crashes showed good agreement with nonlinear 2-fluid simulations. This indicates that the fast reconnection observed in these events is adequately described including the pressure gradient and the electron inertia in the parallel Ohm’s law. Concerning disruption physics, a shattered pellet injection system was installed in collaboration with the ITER International Organisation. Thanks to the ability to vary the shard size distribution independently of the injection velocity, as well as its impurity admixture, it was possible to tailor the current quench rate, which is an important requirement for future large devices such as ITER. Progress was also made modelling the force reduction of VDEs induced by massive gas injection on AUG. The H-mode density limit was characterised in terms of safe operational space with a newly developed active feedback control method that allowed the stability boundary to be probed several times within a single discharge without inducing a disruptive termination. Regarding integrated operation scenarios, the role of density peaking in the confinement of the ITER baseline scenario (high plasma current) was clarified. The usual energy confinement scaling ITER98(p,y) does not capture this effect, but the more recent H20 scaling does, highlighting again the importance of developing adequate physics based models. Advanced tokamak scenarios, aiming at large non-inductive current fraction due to non-standard profiles of the safety factor in combination with high normalised plasma pressure were studied with a focus on their access conditions. A method to guide the approach of the targeted safety factor profiles was developed, and the conditions for achieving good confinement were clarified. Based on this, two types of advanced scenarios (‘hybrid’ and ‘elevated’

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Nonlocal transport in bounded two-dimensional systems: An iterative method

Here, the concept of transport mediated through the dynamics of 'jumping' particles is used to develop an iterative method for obtaining steady-state solutions to the nonlocal transport equation in two dimensions (2D). The technique is self-adjoint and capable of correctly treating spatially non-uniform, asymmetric systems. An appropriate reduced version of the iteration method is used to compare with results obtained with a self-adjoint 1D transport matrix approach. The transport 'jump' probability distribution functions (pdfs) are based on Lévy α-stable distributions. The technique can handle the entire Lévy α-parameter range from one (Lorentz distributions) to two (Gaussian distributions). Cases with α = 2 (standard diffusion) are used to establish the validity of the iterative method. The capabilities of the iterative method are demonstrated by presenting examples from systems with various source configurations, boundary shapes, boundary conditions and spatial variations in parameters.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Design Considerations to Ensure Robustness of the ITER Diagnostics Residual Gas Analyzer

Increasing robustness of the ITER diagnostic residual gas analyzer (DRGA) is critical for the potential control of plasma heating and fuel-cycle processing. Robustness is a requirement for a diagnostic to have a control function. The DRGA is a multisensor diagnostic system capable of resolving isotopic compositions of hydrogen and helium as well as other heavier elements and compounds. The divertor-specific DRGA system is intended to measure the composition of gases in the ITER subdivertor region and midplane. Its analysis station will be located in a port cell at the divertor level. From there, it will sample a slip stream of gas from the cryogenic pump duct. It will then exhaust into a shared roughing line where helium or other light gas impurities, some potentially from other diagnostic systems, are likely to be present. In order to provide reliable measurements, the DRGA must be robust in areas such as plasma optical emission source geometry for a compact design, mitigation of back-streaming from light gases and resilience to the ITER port cell environment, and radiation hardening of the DRGA electronics. By incorporating robustness into the design, areas of plasma heating and fuel-cycle control may be explored with the DRGA for ITER and next-generation fusion devices.

Quinlan, Brendan↗

PERKS: a Locality-Optimized Execution Model for Iterative Memory-bound GPU Applications

Iterative memory-bound solvers commonly occur in HPC codes. Typical GPU implementations have a loop on the host side that invokes the GPU kernel as much as time/algorithm steps there are. The termination of each kernel implicitly acts the barrier required after advancing the solution every time step. We propose an execution model for running memory-bound iterative GPU kernels: PERsistent KernelS (PERKS). In this model, the time loop is moved inside persistent kernel, and device-wide barriers are used for synchronization. We then reduce the traffic to device memory by caching subset of the output in each time step in the unused registers and shared memory. PERKS can be generalized to any iterative solver: they largely independent of the solver's implementation. We explain the design principle of PERKS and demonstrate effectiveness of PERKS for a wide range of iterative 2D/3D stencil benchmarks (geomean speedup of 2.12x for 2D stencils and 1.24x for 3D stencils over state-of-art libraries), and a Krylov subspace conjugate gradient solver (geomean speedup of 4.86x in smaller SpMV datasets from SuiteSparse and 1.43x in larger SpMV datasets over a state-of-art library). All PERKS-based implementations available at: https://github.com/neozhang307/PERKS.

Zhang, Lingqi↗

Preliminary Neutronics Analysis of the ITER Toroidal Interferometer and Polarimeter Diagnostic Corner Cube Retroreflectors

ITER is an international project under construction in France that will demonstrate nuclear fusion at a power plant-relevant scale. The Toroidal Interferometer and Polarimeter (TIP) Diagnostic will be used to measure the plasma electron line density along 5 laser-beam chords. This line-averaged density measurement will be input to the ITER feedback-control system. The TIP is considered the primary diagnostic for these measurements, which are needed for basic ITER machine control. Therefore, system reliability & accuracy is a critical element in TIP’s design. There are two major challenges to the reliability of the TIP system. First is the survivability and performance of in-vessel optics and second is maintaining optical alignment over long optical paths and large vessel movements. Both of these issues greatly depend on minimizing the overall distortion due to neutron & gamma heating of the Corner Cube Retroreflectors (CCRs). These are small optical mirrors embedded in five first wall locations around the vacuum vessel, corresponding to certain plasma tangency radii. During the development of the design and location of these CCRs, several iterations of neutronics analyses were performed to determine and minimize the total distortion due to nuclear heating of the CCRs. The CCR corresponding to TIP Channel 2 was chosen for analysis as a good middle-road case, being an average distance from the plasma (of the five channels) and having moderate neutron shielding from its blanket shield housing. Results show that Channel 2 meets the requirements of the TIP Diagnostic, but barely. These results suggest other CCRs might be at risk of exceeding thermal deformation due to nuclear heating.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Multiphysics Engineering Analysis for an Integrated Design of ITER Diagnostic First Wall and Diagnostic Shield Module Design

ITER diagnostic first walls (DFWs) and diagnostic shield modules (DSMs) inside the port plugs (PPs) are designed to protect diagnostic instrument and components from a harsh plasma environment and provide structural support while allowing for diagnostic access to the plasma. The design of DFWs and DSMs are driven by 1) plasma radiation and nuclear heating during normal operation 2) electromagnetic loads during plasma events and associate component structural responses. A multi-physics engineering analysis protocol for the design has been established at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and it was used for the design of ITER DFWs and DSMs. The analyses were performed to address challenging design issues based on resultant stresses and deflections of the DFW-DSM-PP assembly for the main load cases. ITER Structural Design Criteria for In-Vessel Components (SDC-IC) required for design by analysis and three major issues driving the mechanical design of ITER DFWs are discussed. The general guidelines for the DSM design have been established as a result of design parametric studies.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Iterative HOMER with uncertainties

We present iHOMER, an iterative version of the HOMER method to extract Lund fragmentation functions from experimental data. Through iterations, we address the information gap between latent and observable phase spaces and systematically remove bias. To quantify uncertainties on the inferred weights, we use a combination of Bayesian neural networks and uncertainty-aware regression. We find that the combination of iterations and uncertainty quantification produces well-calibrated weights that accurately reproduce the data distribution. A parametric closure test shows that the iteratively learned fragmentation function is compatible with the true fragmentation function.

Butter, Anja [Heidelberg Univ. (Germany); Sorbonne↗

Robust parallel iterative solvers for linear and least-squares problems (Final Technical Report)

The primary goal of this project is to study and develop robust iterative methods for solving linear systems of equations and least squares systems. The focus of the Minnesota team is on algorithms development, robustness issues, and on tests and validation of the methods on realistic problems. 1. The project begun with an investigation on how to practically update a preconditioner obtained from an ILU-type factorization, when the coefficient matrix changes. 2. We investigated strategies to improve robustness in parallel preconditioners in a specific case of a PDE with discontinuous coefficients. 3. We explored ways to adapt standard preconditioners for solving linear systems arising from the Helmholtz equation. These are often difficult linear systems to solve by iterative methods. 4. We have also worked on purely theoretical issues related to the analysis of Krylov subspace methods for linear systems. 5. We developed an effective strategy for performing ILU factorizations for the case when the matrix is highly indefinite. The strategy uses shifting in some optimal way. The method was extended to the solution of Helmholtz equations by using complex shifts, yielding very good results in many cases. 6. We addressed the difficult problem of preconditioning sparse systems of equations on GPUs. 7. A by-product of the above work is a software package consisting of an iterative solver library for GPUs based on CUDA. This was made publicly available. It was the first such library that offers complete iterative solvers for GPUs. 8. We considered another form of ILU which blends coarsening techniques from Multigrid with algebraic multilevel methods. 9. We have released a new version on our parallel solver - called pARMS [new version is version 3]. As part of this we have tested the code in complex settings - including the solution of Maxwell and Helmholtz equations and for a problem of crystal growth.10. As an application of polynomial preconditioning we considered the problem of evaluating f(A)v which arises in statistical sampling. 11. As an application to the methods we developed, we tackled the problem of computing the diagonal of the inverse of a matrix. This arises in statistical applications as well as in many applications in physics. We explored probing methods as well as domain-decomposition type methods. 12. A collaboration with researchers from Toulouse, France, considered the important problem of computing the Schur complement in a domain-decomposition approach. 13. We explored new ways of preconditioning linear systems, based on low-rank approximations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Simple Construction of High Order Rational Iterative Equation Solvers

This article proposes a general technique to construct arbitrarily high order rational one-point iterative equation solvers based on truncated Taylor expansion from lower order schemes. With adding one more function call, an iterative equation solver of convergence order n can be accelerated to order (2n-1). Many existing (some recently published) one-point and two-point iterative equation solvers are special cases of the proposed construction. The proposed approach may be used to obtain new iterative equation solvers.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A geometric theory for the QR, LU and power iterations.

Consideration of the task of computing the invariant subspaces of a given matrix. For this purpose the LU, QR, treppen and bi-iterations have been presented, used, and studied more or less independently of the old-fashioned power method. Each of these methods generates implicitly a sequence of subspaces which determines the convergence properties of the method. The iterations differ in the way in which a basis is constructed to represent each subspace. This aspect largely determines the usefulness of the method. It is shown that the first four iterations produce exactly the same sequence of subspaces as do direct and inverse iteration started from appropriate subspaces. Their convergence properties are therefore the same, and a complete geometric convergence theory is presented in terms of the power method. It is shown that Hessenberg matrices are associated with ideal starting spaces.

Parlett, B. N.↗

Comparison of linear inversion methods by examination of the duality between iterative and inverse matrix methods

Linear numerical inversion methods applied to atmospheric remote sounding generally can be categorized in two ways: (1) iterative, and (2) inverse matrix methods. However, these two categories are not unrelated; a duality exists between them. In other words, given an iterative scheme, a corresponding inverse matrix method exists, and conversely. This duality concept is developed for the more familiar linear methods. The iterative duals are compared with the classical linear iterative approaches and their differences analyzed. The importance of the initial profile in all methods is stressed. Calculations using simulated data are made to compare accuracies and to examine the dependence of the solution on the initial profile.

Fleming, H. E.↗

On the convergence of an iterative formulation of the electromagnetic scattering from an infinite grating of thin wires

Contraction theory is applied to an iterative formulation of electromagnetic scattering from periodic structures and a computational method for insuring convergence is developed. A short history of spectral (or k-space) formulation is presented with an emphasis on application to periodic surfaces. The mathematical background for formulating an iterative equation is covered using straightforward single variable examples including an extension to vector spaces. To insure a convergent solution of the iterative equation, a process called the contraction corrector method is developed. Convergence properties of previously presented iterative solutions to one-dimensional problems are examined utilizing contraction theory and the general conditions for achieving a convergent solution are explored. The contraction corrector method is then applied to several scattering problems including an infinite grating of thin wires with the solution data compared to previous works.

Brand, J. C.↗

Leapfrog variants of iterative methods for linear algebra equations

Two iterative methods are considered, Richardson's method and a general second order method. For both methods, a variant of the method is derived for which only even numbered iterates are computed. The variant is called a leapfrog method. Comparisons between the conventional form of the methods and the leapfrog form are made under the assumption that the number of unknowns is large. In the case of Richardson's method, it is possible to express the final iterate in terms of only the initial approximation, a variant of the iteration called the grand-leap method. In the case of the grand-leap variant, a set of parameters is required. An algorithm is presented to compute these parameters that is related to algorithms to compute the weights and abscissas for Gaussian quadrature. General algorithms to implement the leapfrog and grand-leap methods are presented. Algorithms for the important special case of the Chebyshev method are also given.

Saylor, Paul E.↗

Distributed Minimal Residual (DMR) method for acceleration of iterative algorithms

A new method for enhancing the convergence rate of iterative algorithms for the numerical integration of systems of partial differential equations was developed. It is termed the Distributed Minimal Residual (DMR) method and it is based on general Krylov subspace methods. The DMR method differs from the Krylov subspace methods by the fact that the iterative acceleration factors are different from equation to equation in the system. At the same time, the DMR method can be viewed as an incomplete Newton iteration method. The DMR method was applied to Euler equations of gas dynamics and incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. All numerical test cases were obtained using either explicit four stage Runge-Kutta or Euler implicit time integration. The formulation for the DMR method is general in nature and can be applied to explicit and implicit iterative algorithms for arbitrary systems of partial differential equations.

Lee, Seungsoo↗