Magnetohydrodynamic effects on pellet injection in tokamaks

Journal Article · Wed Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.872955· OSTI ID:636159

Strauss, H R ^[1]; Park, W ^[2]

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1. Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 251 Mercer Street, New York, New York 10012 (United States)
2. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08543 (United States)

The location at which pellets are injected into a plasma can have a significant effect on what fraction of the pellet mass remains in the plasma for refueling purposes. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations presented here, confirm the results of pellet injection experiments: toroidal curvature makes it favorable to inject pellets from the inboard side or from the top or bottom, rather than from the outboard side. Sufficiently large pellets injected at the inboard edge can reach the plasma center, and in the process drive magnetic reconnection to produce negative central shear. Injection at the top (or bottom) of the tokamak causes relatively little displacement of the pellet. A scaling law is obtained for pellet displacement which agrees well with the simulations. The MHD simulations were carried out with a new unstructured mesh finite element version of the MH3D full MHD code. {copyright} {ital 1998 American Institute of Physics.}

• OSTI ID: 636159
• Journal Information: Physics of Plasmas, Journal Name: Physics of Plasmas Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 5; ISSN PHPAEN; ISSN 1070-664X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
FUEL PELLETS
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
PELLET INJECTION
PLASMA DENSITY
PLASMA SIMULATION
SCALING LAWS
THERMONUCLEAR REACTOR FUELING
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
TOKAMAK DEVICES