100 research outputs found
3D simulations of vertical displacement events in tokamaks: A benchmark of M3D-C, NIMROD and JOREK
In recent years, the nonlinear 3D magnetohydrodynamic codes JOREK, M3D-C
and NIMROD developed the capability of modelling realistic 3D vertical
displacement events (VDEs) including resistive walls. In this paper, a
comprehensive 3D VDE benchmark is presented between these state of the art
codes. The simulated case is based on an experimental NSTX plasma but with a
simplified rectangular wall. In spite of pronounced differences between physics
models and numerical methods, the comparison shows very good agreement in the
relevant quantities used to characterize disruptions such as the 3D wall forces
and energy decay. This benchmark does not only bring confidence regarding the
use of the mentioned codes for disruption studies, but also shows differences
with respect to the used models (e.g. reduced versus full MHD models). The
simulations show important 3D features for a NSTX plasma such as the
self-consistent evolution of the halo current and the origin of the wall
forces. In contrast to other reduced MHD models based on an ordering in the
aspect ratio, the ansatz based JOREK reduced MHD model allows capturing the 3D
dynamics even in the spherical tokamak limit considered here
Spectrum of Kinetic Alfven Turbulence
A model for strong kinetic Alfv\'en plasma turbulence at scales smaller than
the ion gyroscale is proposed. It is argued that magnetic and density
fluctuations are concentrated mostly at two-dimensional structures, which leads
to their Fourier energy spectra , where
is the wave-vector component normal to the strong background magnetic
field. The results are shown to be in good agreement with numerical
simulations, and they can explain recent observations of magnetic and density
fluctuations in the solar wind at sub-proton scales.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
A Fast Semi-implicit Method for Anisotropic Diffusion
Simple finite differencing of the anisotropic diffusion equation, where
diffusion is only along a given direction, does not ensure that the numerically
calculated heat fluxes are in the correct direction. This can lead to negative
temperatures for the anisotropic thermal diffusion equation. In a previous
paper we proposed a monotonicity-preserving explicit method which uses limiters
(analogous to those used in the solution of hyperbolic equations) to
interpolate the temperature gradients at cell faces. However, being explicit,
this method was limited by a restrictive Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL)
stability timestep. Here we propose a fast, conservative, directionally-split,
semi-implicit method which is second order accurate in space, is stable for
large timesteps, and is easy to implement in parallel. Although not strictly
monotonicity-preserving, our method gives only small amplitude temperature
oscillations at large temperature gradients, and the oscillations are damped in
time. With numerical experiments we show that our semi-implicit method can
achieve large speed-ups compared to the explicit method, without seriously
violating the monotonicity constraint. This method can also be applied to
isotropic diffusion, both on regular and distorted meshes.Comment: accepted in the Journal of Computational Physics; 13 pages, 7
figures; updated to the accepted versio
Axisymmetric simulations of vertical displacement events in tokamaks: A benchmark of M3D-C1, NIMROD and JOREK
A benchmark exercise for the modeling of vertical displacement events(VDEs) is presented and applied to the 3D nonlinear magneto-hydrodynamic codesM3D-C1, JOREK and NIMROD. The simulations are based on a vertically unstableNSTX equilibrium enclosed by an axisymmetric resistive wall with rectangular crosssection. A linear dependence of the linear VDE growth rates on the resistivity ofthe wall is recovered for sufficiently large wall conductivity and small temperatures inthe open field line region. The benchmark results show good agreement between theVDE growth rates obtained from linear NIMROD and M3D-C1simulations as wellas from the linear phase of axisymmetric nonlinear JOREK, NIMROD and M3D-C1simulations. Axisymmetric nonlinear simulations of a full VDE performed with thethree codes are compared and excellent agreement is found regarding plasma locationand plasma currents as well as eddy and halo currents in the wall.</p
Ideal Internal Kink Modes in a Line-tied Screw Pinch
It is well known that the radial displacement of the internal kink mode
in a periodic screw pinch has a steep jump at the resonant surface where
. In a line-tied system, relevant to solar and
astrophysical plasmas, the resonant surface is no longer a valid concept. It is
then of interest to see how line-tying alters the aforementioned result for a
periodic system. If the line-tied kink also produces a steep gradient,
corresponding to a thin current layer, it may lead to strong resistive effects
even with weak dissipation. Numerical solution of the eigenmode equations shows
that the fastest growing kink mode in a line-tied system still possesses a jump
in the radial displacement at the location coincident with the resonant surface
of the fastest growing mode in the periodic counterpart. However, line-tying
thickens the inner layer and slows down the growth rate. As the system length
approaches infinity, both the inner layer thickness and the growth rate
approach the periodic values. In the limit of small , the critical length for instability .
The relative increase in the inner layer thickness due to line-tying scales as
.Comment: To appear in Physics of Plasma
Magnetic Reconnection with Asymmetry in the Outflow Direction
Magnetic reconnection with asymmetry in the outflow direction occurs in the
Earth's magnetotail, coronal mass ejections, flux cancellation events,
astrophysical disks, spheromak merging experiments, and elsewhere in nature and
the laboratory. A control volume analysis is performed for the case of steady
antiparallel magnetic reconnection with asymmetric downstream pressure, which
is used to derive scaling relations for the outflow velocity from each side of
the current sheet and the reconnection rate. Simple relationships for outflow
velocity are presented for the incompressible case and the case of symmetric
downstream pressure but asymmetric downstream density. Asymmetry alone is not
found to greatly affect the reconnection rate. The flow stagnation point and
magnetic field null do not coincide in a steady state unless the pressure
gradient is negligible at the flow stagnation point.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to JGR. Any comments will be
appreciate
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