A computational model describing confinement and performance of circular and D-shaped tokamak plasmas (Q1110420)

A combined one-dimensional and two-dimensional description of toroidal and axisymmetric plasmas is presented which is based essentially on an equilibrium solver resorting to the fast Buneman invertor (``equilibrium module'') and two one-dimensional transport codes describing the protium, deuterium, tritium, and plasma energy inventory (``plasma module'') and accounting for three impurity species (``impurity module''); it is employed to compute the time evolution of tokamak plasmas. The attempt was made to achieve a consistent modelling of the transport and equilibrium phenomena in a plasma which interacts with the peripheral devices for e.g., confinement, plasma heating, and limitation of the plasma aperture. The equilibrium solver is connected to a coil submodule computing the poloidal field coil currents maintaining the designed plasma shape approximately. A surface current density accounting for the magnetization of the iron core and the yokes is calculated by means of the module for the transformer iron. This module is linked to the equilibrium solver as well so that consistency between the coil currents, the plasma current distribution, and the magnetization of the transformer iron is achieved. The ``scrape-off module'' resorts to a radial model for the limiters. The modules for additional heating account for a full beam geometry within a simple approach for the RF-heating. The neutral atomic and molecular hydrogen species are described by a multidimensional Monte Carlo code, or, alternatively, by the fast 1D-code SPUDNUT (``neutral gas module''). The MHD behaviour is estimated by evaluating the time evolution of the Mercier and the resistive interchange criteria (``stability module''). The calculations which are based on TEXTOR, JET, and INTOR data resort preferentially to the equilibrium, the coil, and the transformer module.