Simulation of pellet ablation for tokamak fueling with ITAPS front tracking

Abstract

A magnetohydrodynamic numerical model and parallel software for the ablation of cryogenic deuterium pellets in the process of tokamak fueling has been developed based on the method of front tracking of ITAPS Center. The main features of the model are the explicit tracking of material interfaces, a surface ablation model, a kinetic model for the electron heat flux, a cloud charging and rotation model, and an equation of state accounting for atomic processes in the ablation cloud. The software was used for the first systematic studies of the pellet ablation rate and properties of the ablation channel in magnetic fields. Simulations revealed new features of the pellet ablation such as strong dependence of the radius of the ablation channel and ablation rate on the warm-up time and supersonic spinning of the ablation channel. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.