Treatment of advanced divertor configurations in the flux-coordinate independent turbulence code GRILLIX

Abstract

Advanced divertor configurations modify the magnetic geometry of the divertor to achieve a combination of strong magnetic flux expansion, increased connection length and higher divertor volume—to improve detachment stability, neutral/impurity confinement and heat-channel broadening. In this paper, we discuss the modification of the flux-coordinate independent (FCI) turbulence code GRILLIX to treat generalized magnetic geometry, to allow for the investigation of the effect of magnetic geometry on turbulent structures in the edge and scrape-off layer (SOL). The development of grids and parallel operators from numerically defined magnetic equilibria is discussed, as is the application of boundary conditions via penalization, with the finite-width method generalized to treat complex non-conformal boundaries. Initial testing of hyperbolic (advection) and parabolic (diffusion) test cases are presented for the Snowflake scenario.