Engineering topics

Grasso, Daniela

Publications and source records attributed to Grasso, Daniela.

5 records

DOE OSTI2022

Marginally stable current sheets in collisionless magnetic reconnection

Noncollisional current sheets that form during the nonlinear development of spontaneous magnetic reconnection are characterized by a small thickness, of the order of the electron skin depth. They can become unstable to the formation of plasmoids, which allows the magnetic reconnection process to reach high reconnection rates. In this work, we investigate the marginal stability conditions for the development of plasmoids when the forming current sheet is purely collisionless and in the presence of a strong guide field. We analyze the geometry that characterizes the reconnecting current sheet, and what promotes its elongation. Once the reconnecting current sheet is formed, we identify the regimes for which it is plasmoid unstable. Finally, our study shows that plasmoids can be obtained, in this context, from current sheets with an aspect ratio much smaller than in the collisional regime, and that the plasma flow channel of the marginally stable current layers maintains an inverse aspect ratio of 0.1.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2017

Structure and computation of two-dimensional incompressible extended MHD

A comprehensive study of the extended magnetohydrodynamic model obtained from the two-fluid theory for electrons and ions with the enforcement of quasineutrality is given. Starting from the Hamiltonian structure of the fully three-dimensional theory, a Hamiltonian two-dimensional incompressible four-field model is derived. In this way, the energy conservation along with four families of Casimir invariants is naturally obtained. The construction facilitates various limits leading to the Hamiltonian forms of Hall, inertial, and ideal MHD, with their conserved energies and Casimir invariants. Basic linear theory of the four-field model is treated, and the growth rate for collisionless reconnection is obtained. Finally, results from nonlinear simulations of collisionless tearing are presented and interpreted using, in particular, normal fields, a product of the Hamiltonian theory that gives rise to simplified equations of motion.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Open problems of magnetic island control by electron cyclotron current drive

This study reviews key aspects of the problem of magnetic islands control by electron cyclotron current drive in fusion devices. On the basis of the ordering of the basic spatial and time scales of the magnetic reconnection physics, we present the established results, highlighting some of the open issues posed by the small-scale structures that typically accompany the nonlinear evolution of the magnetic islands and constrain the effect of the control action.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Variational integrators for reduced magnetohydrodynamics

Reduced magnetohydrodynamics is a simplified set of magnetohydrodynamics equations with applications to both fusion and astrophysical plasmas, possessing a noncanonical Hamiltonian structure and consequently a number of conserved functionals. We propose a new discretisation strategy for these equations based on a discrete variational principle applied to a formal Lagrangian. The resulting integrator preserves important quantities like the total energy, magnetic helicity and cross helicity exactly (up to machine precision). As the integrator is free of numerical resistivity, spurious reconnection along current sheets is absent in the ideal case. If effects of electron inertia are added, reconnection of magnetic field lines is allowed, although the resulting model still possesses a noncanonical Hamiltonian structure. After reviewing the conservation laws of the model equations, the adopted variational principle with the related conservation laws is described both at the continuous and discrete level. We verify the favourable properties of the variational integrator in particular with respect to the preservation of the invariants of the models under consideration and compare with results from the literature and those of a pseudo-spectral code.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2014

Nonlinear 2-D effects in the control of magnetic Islands by ECCD

The stabilization of tearing magnetic islands by means of localized current driven by electron cyclotron waves, requires optimizing the efficiency of the injected helical current. The problem is conventionally addressed using 0-D model of the (generalized) Rutherford equation to find the dependence in terms of the island width, wave beam width and deposition scale length, as well as phase tracking requirements. The use of a 2-D reconnection model shows that both the early time response of a tearing unstable system to ECCD and important nonlinear processes lead to irreversible modifications on the 2-D configuration, where 'phase' and 'width' of an island cease to be observable and controllable state variables. In particular the occurrence of a phase instability and of multiple axis and current sheets, may be a serious impediment for feedback control schemes.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗