Interactions écoulements grandes échelles et turbulences dans les plasmas de bord de tokamak. Développement et intégration d’un modèle de turbulence dans les codes de transport (thèse 2017 - 2020)
Publications scientifiques au M2P2
2021
Raffaele Tatali, Eric Serre, Patrick Tamain, Davide Galassi, Philippe Ghendrih, et al.. Impact of collisionality on turbulence in the edge of tokamak plasma using 3D global simulations. Nuclear Fusion, 2021, ⟨10.1088/1741-4326/abe98b⟩. ⟨hal-03182318⟩ Plus de détails...
Collisionality is one of the key parameters in determining turbulent transport in the plasma edge, regulating phenomena such as "shoulder formation", separation of scale lengths in the scrape-off layer, turbulence damping and zonal flow dynamics. Understanding its role is therefore of primary importance for future reactors like ITER. Obtaining reliable predictions and a better characterization of plasma flow properties when varying collisionality remains, however, a critical challenge for the simulations. This paper focuses on the impact of varying collisionality in a nonisothermal three-dimensional fluid model of the plasma edge. A high field side limited configuration encompassing open and closed magnetic field lines with parameters typical of a medium-sized tokamak is considered. The present model can consistently account for the variations of collisionality and its impact on both the parallel resistivity η and the ion and electron parallel thermal conductivities χ e,i. Details on mean flow and turbulence properties are given. Changing collisionality leads to significant changes in the flow properties both on the mean and fluctuating quantities. In particular, lowering collisionality decreases the size of coherent structures, the fluctuation levels of turbulence, and steepens the density and temperature equilibrium profiles around the separatrix leading to a global reduction of the turbulent transport. The scrape-off layer (SOL) width is observed to increase with collisionality, eventually resulting in the disappearance of the scale lengths separation between near and far SOL, consistently with previous experimental observations. At low collisionality, where the presence of narrow feature is well-established, a contribution of heat conduction increases up to compete with heat convection.
Raffaele Tatali, Eric Serre, Patrick Tamain, Davide Galassi, Philippe Ghendrih, et al.. Impact of collisionality on turbulence in the edge of tokamak plasma using 3D global simulations. Nuclear Fusion, 2021, ⟨10.1088/1741-4326/abe98b⟩. ⟨hal-03182318⟩
F. Nespoli, P. Tamain, N. Fedorczak, G. Ciraolo, D. Galassi, et al.. 3D structure and dynamics of filaments in turbulence simulations of WEST diverted plasmas. Nuclear Fusion, 2019. ⟨hal-02364554⟩ Plus de détails...
We study the effect of a diverted magnetic geometry on edge plasma turbulence, focusing on the three-dimensional structure and dynamics of filaments, also called blobs, in simulations of the WEST tokamak, featuring a primary and secondary X-point. For this purpose, in addition to classical analysis techniques, we apply here a novel fully 3D Blob Recognition And Tracking (BRAT) algorithm, allowing for the first time to resolve the three-dimensional structure and dynamics of the blobs in a turbulent 3D plasma featuring a realistic magnetic geometry. The results are tested against existing theoretical scalings of blob velocity [Myra et al, Physics of Plasmas 2006]. The complementary analysis of the 3D structure of the filaments shows how they disconnect from the divertor plate in the vicinity of the X-points, leading to a transition from a sheath-connected regime to the ideal-interchange one. Furthermore, the numerical results show non-negligible effects of the turbulent background plasma: approximately half of the detected filaments are involved in mutual interactions, eventually resulting in negative radial velocities, and a fraction of the filaments is generated by turbulence directly below the X-point.
F. Nespoli, P. Tamain, N. Fedorczak, G. Ciraolo, D. Galassi, et al.. 3D structure and dynamics of filaments in turbulence simulations of WEST diverted plasmas. Nuclear Fusion, 2019. ⟨hal-02364554⟩
Philippe Ghendrih, Y. Asahi, E. Caschera, Guilhem Dif-Pradalier, P. Peter Donnel, et al.. Generation and dynamics of SOL corrugated profiles. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2018, 1125, pp.012011. ⟨10.1088/1742-6596/1125/1/012011⟩. ⟨hal-02196677⟩ Plus de détails...
The staircase transport regime reported in kinetic simulations of plasma turbulent transport in magnetic confinement is recovered with a simple 2D fluid model allowing for reduced damping of the zonal flows. Some of the complex dynamics of the kinetic zonation regime are recovered but the pattern of the corrugation appears to be sinusoidal with a characteristic scale comparable to that of turbulence modes with largest spectral energy, in contrast to regimes observed in global and flux-driven kinetic simulations. Enhanced zonal flows govern both an overall reduction of the SOL width and a gradual steepening of the gradients with distance to the separatrix.
Philippe Ghendrih, Y. Asahi, E. Caschera, Guilhem Dif-Pradalier, P. Peter Donnel, et al.. Generation and dynamics of SOL corrugated profiles. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2018, 1125, pp.012011. ⟨10.1088/1742-6596/1125/1/012011⟩. ⟨hal-02196677⟩
