Improved tokamak dust transport simulations

Lead Research Organisation: Imperial College London
Department Name: Physics

Abstract

Our DTOKS (Dust in TOKamakS) code simulates the motion and lifetime of tokamak dust produced by the erosion of plasma facing walls. It has been used to study various tokamaks including MAST, JET and ITER. At present the code assumes that the background plasma, through which the dust grains move, is constant in time. This project would involve upgrading the code to allow for time dependent plasmas. In addition, there are several other improvements which need to be made to the code's basic physics model. These would be based on our recent work on dust-plasma interactions, and would include the charging of large and non-spherical dust grains, magnetic field effects, and misty plasma effects. Once upgraded the code would be used to study dust transport during ELM crashes.
Funding

Publications

10 25 50

Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
EP/N509486/1 01/10/2016 31/03/2022
1858554 Studentship EP/N509486/1 01/10/2016 31/05/2020 Luke Simons
 
Description The most plausible theory for explaining camera observations of forking trajectories of dust particles inside of the Joint European Torus tokamak is that the particles are liquid droplets which become rotationally unstable. The rotational motion (which is extremely rapid with rates of up to 10kHz) is induced through interaction of the molten metals with the plasma in a strong magnetic field and in particular, the angular momentum which it collects from electron impacts.
Exploitation Route There is the potential for inducing the disruption of liquid droplets suspended in plasmas using strong magnetic fields. For magnetically confined fusion plasmas, this knowledge could be used to minimise the propagation and potential for contamination of dust.
Sectors Energy