Modelling kinetic effects on the heat exhaust in high power tokamaks

在布鲁内尔大学获得机械工程硕士学位后，我花了五年时间在能源行业担任燃烧计算流体力学专家。我加入CDT是为了实现我转向核聚变的长期梦想，并为其未来的商业化做出贡献。我的项目名为“高功率托卡马克中热排出的动力学模拟”，将由约克的克里斯·里杰斯博士和本·达德森博士负责监督。它涉及到对等离子体边缘的模拟--在这个区域，等离子体废气被托卡马克的磁场引导到偏滤器。在功率更大的反应堆中，这会使偏滤器暴露在已知材料无法承受的热流中。将热负荷最小化到可管理的水平带来了几个尚未解决的挑战，这是确保ITER、DEMO和STEP等高功率输出反应堆性能的关键。目前最先进的等离子体边缘模型假定局部热力学平衡(LTE)。该项目将通过使用新的、开创性的非LTE模型来挑战这一假设，这些模型已经显示出与先前为热核实验堆获得的结果显著不同。这项工作将探索使用这一新方法对加深我们对等离子体排气和偏滤器现象的理解的影响，重点是评估减轻偏滤器热负荷的策略。

Following the completion of my MEng in Mechanical Engineering at Brunel University, I spent five years as a combustion computational fluid dynamics specialist in the energy industry. I have joined the CDT to fulfil my long-standing dream of switching to nuclear fusion and to contribute towards its future commercialisation. My project is titled "Modelling Kinetic Effects on the Heat Exhaust in High Power Tokamaks" and will be supervised by Dr Chris Ridgers and Dr Ben Dudson based in York. It concerns the simulations of the plasma edge - a region where the plasma exhaust is directed towards the divertor by the tokamak's magnetic fields. In more powerful reactors, this can expose the divertor to heat fluxes beyond what known materials can withstand. Minimising the heat loading to manageable levels poses several yet-unsolved challenges, and is key to ensuring performance in high power output reactors such as ITER, DEMO and STEP. Current state-of-the-art models of the plasma edge assume local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). This project will challenge this assumption by using new, pioneering non-LTE models, which have shown significant departures from previous results obtained for ITER. This work will explore the impact of using this new approach on furthering our understanding of plasma exhaust and divertor phenomena, with a focus on assessing strategies for mitigating divertor heat loading.