May 6-8

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Author: Jack Gabriel
Requested Type: Poster
Submitted: 2024-04-11 10:30:21

Co-authors: S. Mordijck

Contact Info:
William & Mary
1919 Glynn Springs Drive
Williamsburg, VA   23188
United States

Abstract Text:
In this work, we present a discontinuous Galerkin method to model the kinetic equation to simulate neutral particle dynamics. Neutral atoms and molecules play a critical role in fusion devices where they dominate plasma fueling and are critical to mitigating the heat flux to the divertor [1, 2]. The low collisional coupling between neutrals necessitates kinetic description [3]. Existing kinetic Monte Carlo (MC) codes capture the full dynamics, but suffer from statistical noise, hampering accuracy and convergence in addition with their computational expense directly linked to the number of particles necessary to capture a neutral density that can vary by orders of magnitude from the divertor to the main plasma [4]. This strongly affects the scalability of the MC approach when modeling fusion pilot plants [5]. To address these challenges, we propose a continuum kinetic neutral model using the discontinuous Galerkin method. This approach offers arbitrarily high-order accuracy, parallel scalability, and the ability to model complex geometries [6]. By leveraging these advantages, our code aims to overcome noise limitations, improve scalability for large-scale simulations and tackle complex divertor geometries encountered in fusion research. The poster discusses the theoretical background along with test cases showing the conservation properties of the method in solving the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation in one spatial and one velocity dimension (1X1V). Ongoing work on using unstructured and adaptive grids along with utilizing GPUs is discussed.

Acknowledgments
Work supported by US DOE under DE-SC0007880.

References
[1] S. Mordijck, Nucl. Fusion 60, 082006(2020)
[2] P. C. Stangeby, The Plasma Boundary of Magnetic Fusion Devices(2000)
[3] M. Moscheni et al, Nucl. Fusion 62, 056009(2022)
[4] I. Josepch et al, Nucl. Mater. Energy 12, 813-81(2017)
[5] D. V. Borodin et al, Nucl. Fusion 62 086051(2022)
[6] J. Hesthaven, Nodal Discontinuous Galerkin Methods(2008)

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