A hybrid discontinuous Galerkin method for tokamak edge plasma simulations in global realistic geometry

Progressing toward more accurate and more efficient numerical codes forthe simulation of transport and turbulence in the edge plasma of tokamaks,we propose in this work a new hybrid discontinous Galerkin solver. Basedon 2D advection-diffusion conservation equations for the ion density and theparticle flux in the direction parallel to the magnetic field, the code simulatesplasma transport in the poloidal section of tokamaks, including the open fieldlines of the Scrape-off Layer (SOL) and the closed field lines of the core re-gion. The spatial discretization is based on a high-order hybrid DG schemeon unstructured meshes, which provides an arbitrary high-order accuracywhile reducing considerably the number of coupled degrees of freedom witha local condensation process. A discontinuity sensor is employed to identifycritical elements and regularize the solution with the introduction of artificialdiffusion. Based on a finite-element discretization, not constrained by a flux-aligned mesh, the code is able to describe plasma facing components of anycomplex shape using Bohm boundary conditions and to simulate the plasmain versatile magnetic equilibria, possibly extended up to the center. Nu-merical tests using a manufacturated solution show appropriate convergenceorders when varying independently the number of elements or the degree ofinterpolation. Validation is performed by benchmarking the code with thewell-referenced edge transport code SOLEDGE2D (Bufferandet al.2013,2015 [1, 2]) in the WEST geometry. Final numerical experiments show thecapacity of the code to deal with low-diffusion solutions.

Giorgio Giorgiani, Hugo Bufferand, Guido Ciraolo, Philippe Ghendrih, Frédéric Schwander, et al.. A hybrid discontinuous Galerkin method for tokamak edge plasma simulations in global realistic geometry. Journal of Computational Physics, 2018, 374, pp.515-532. ⟨10.1016/j.jcp.2018.07.028⟩. ⟨hal-02114246⟩

Journal: Journal of Computational Physics

Date de publication: 01-12-2018

Auteurs:
  • Giorgio Giorgiani
  • Hugo Bufferand
  • Guido Ciraolo
  • Philippe Ghendrih
  • Frédéric Schwander
  • Eric Serre
  • Patrick Tamain

Digital object identifier (doi): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2018.07.028


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