Electromagnetic thin-wall model for simulations of plasma wall-touching kink and vertical modes

Abstract

The understanding of plasma disruptions in tokamaks and predictions of their effects require realistic simulations of electric current excitation in three-dimensional vessel structures by the plasma touching the walls. As discovered at JET in 1996 (Litunovski JET Internal Report contract no. JQ5/11961, 1995; Noll et al., Proceedings of the 19th Symposium on Fusion Technology, Lisbon (ed. C. Varandas & F. Serra), vol. 1, 1996, p. 751. Elsevier) the wall-touching kink modes are frequently excited during vertical displacement events and cause large sideways forces on the vacuum vessel which are difficult to withstand in large tokamaks. In disruptions, the sharing of electric current between the plasma and the wall plays an important role in plasma dynamics and determines the amplitude and localization of the sideways force (Riccardo et al., Nucl. Fusion, vol. 40, 2000, p. 1805; Riccardo & Walker, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion, vol. 42, 2000, p. 29; Zakharov, Phys. Plasmas, vol. 15, 2008, 062507; Riccardo et al., Nucl. Fusion, vol. 49, 2009, 055012; Bachmann et al., Fusion Engng Des., vol. 86, 2011, pp. 1915–1919). This paper describes a flat triangle representation of the electric circuits of a thin conducting wall of arbitrary three-dimensional geometry. Implemented into the shell simulation code (SHL) and the source sink current code (SSC), this model is suitable for modelling the electric currents excited in the wall inductively and through current sharing with the plasma.