A general MHD formulation for plasmas with flow and resistive walls
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)
- University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (United States)
Toroidal rotation, either induced by means of neutral beams (e.g. in NSTX and DIII-D) or appearing spontaneously (e.g. in Alcator C-Mod, JET and Tore Supra) is routinely observed in modem tokamak experiments. Poloidal rotation is also commonly observed, in particular in the edge region of the plasma. Plasma rotation has a major effect on plasma stability. Flow and flow shear stabilize external modes such as the resistive wall mode (as observed e.g. in DIII-D), suppress turbulence when the flow shear is large enough, and also have a significant influence on the stability and nonlinear evolution of the internal kink and ballooning modes. Flow shear can in particular have both a stabilizing (by breaking up unstable structures) and destabilizing (through the Kelvin-Helmoltz mechanism) effect. A self-consistent analysis of the effect of rotation requires the use of numerical tools. In this work, we present a general eigenvalue formulation based on a variational principle stability analysis, including arbitrary (both toroidal and poloidal) plasma rotation and a thin resistive wall of arbitrary shape and resistivity. It is shown that the problem can always be reduced to a classic eigenvalue formulation of the kind i{omega}A double underbar {center_dot} {zeta}-vector = B double underbar {center_dot} {zeta}-vector, where {zeta}-vector is the unknown eigenvector related to the plasma displacement, and {omega} the (complex) evolution frequency of the perturbation. The formulation is well suited for a finite element analysis.
- OSTI ID:
- 20895143
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 871, Issue 1; Conference: Joint Varenna-Lausanne international workshop on theory of fusion plasmas, Varenna (Italy), 28 Aug - 1 Sep 2006; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2404570; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
ALCATOR DEVICE
BALLOONING INSTABILITY
DOUBLET-3 DEVICE
EIGENVALUES
EIGENVECTORS
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
JET TOKAMAK
KINK INSTABILITY
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
MATHEMATICAL EVOLUTION
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
NSTX DEVICE
PLASMA
PLASMA CONFINEMENT
ROTATION
TORE SUPRA TOKAMAK
VARIATIONAL METHODS
WALL EFFECTS