Controlling the scrape-off layer (SOL) properties in order to limit divertor erosion and extend component lifetime will be crucial to successful operation of ITER and devices that follow, where intermittent thermal loads on the order of GW/m² are expected. Steady state transport in the edge region is generally turbulent with large, order unity, fluctuations and is convection dominated. Owing to the success of the past fifty years of progress in magnetically confining hot plasmas, in this work we examine convective transport phenomena in the SOL that occur in the relatively "slow", drift-ordered fluid limit, most applicable to plasmas near MHD equilibrium. Diamagnetic charge separation in an inhomogeneous magnetic field is the principal energy transfer mechanism powering turbulence and convective transport examined in this work. Two possibilities are explored for controlling SOL conditions. In chapter 2 we review basic physics underlying the equations used to model interchange turbulence in the SOL and use a subset of equations that includes electron temperature and externally applied potential bias to examine the possibility of suppressing interchange driven turbulence in the Texas Helimak. Simulated scans in E₀×B₀ flow shear, driven by changes in the potential bias on the endplates appears to alter turbulence levels as measured by the mean amplitude of fluctuations. In broad agreement with experiment negative biasing generally decreases the fluctuation amplitude. Interaction between flow shear and interchange instability appears to be important, with the interchange rate forming a natural pivot point for observed shear rates. In chapter 3 we examine the possibility of resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) or more generally magnetic field-line chaos to decrease the maximum particle flux incident on the divertor. Naturally occurring error fields as well as RMPs applied for stability control are known to cause magnetic field-line chaos in the SOL region of tokamaks. In chapter 3 2D simulations are used to investigate the effect of the field-line chaos on the SOL and in particular on its width and peak particle flux. The chaos enters the SOL dynamics through the connection length, which is evaluated using a Poincaré map. The variation of experimentally relevant quantities, such as the SOL gradient length scale and the intermittency of the particle flux in the SOL, is described as a function of the strength of the magnetic perturbation. It is found that the effect of the chaos is to broaden the profile of the sheath-loss coefficient, which is proportional to the inverse connection length. That is, the SOL transport in a chaotic field is equivalent to that in a model where the sheathloss coefficient is replaced by its average over the unperturbed flux surfaces. Both fully chaotic and the flux-surface averaged approximation of RMP application significantly lower maximum parallel particle flux incident on the divertor. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/27160 |
| Date | 06 November 2014 |
| Creators | Meyerson, Dmitry |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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