Thermal analysis of plasma facing components of SST-1 Tokamak by finite difference and finite element methods

Abstract

Thermal analysis is a prime consideration in the design of plasma facing components (PFC) cooling during plasma operation in a Tokamak device. The task is greatly simplified by using computer-based numerical techniques. Finite difference method (FDM) and finite element method (FEM) are the two methods generally being used for thermal analysis. FEM is gaining wide acceptance for such problems because it performs all the necessary computations in the computer. FDM, in contrast, requires significant amounts of data to be calculated for input into the computer program. This can provide accurate thermal analysis in less time and less computer memory than FEM. An efficient finite difference (FD) code has been developed to derive the two-dimensional temperature profile in different PFC modules subjected to steady-state condition. The details of the code and comparison of its results with finite element (FE) analysis are presented in this paper.