Implementation of magnetic compressional effects at arbitrary wavelength in the global version of GENE
Not Available
Wilms, Felix (ORCID:0000000198597420)↗
Engineering topics
Merlo, Gabriele
Publications and source records attributed to Merlo, Gabriele.
Advanced surrogate model for electron-scale turbulence in tokamak pedestals
We derive an advanced surrogate model for predicting turbulent transport at the edge of tokamaks driven by electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes. Our derivation is based on a recently developed sensitivity-driven sparse grid interpolation approach for uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis at scale, which informs the set of parameters that define the surrogate model as a scaling law. Our model reveals that ETG-driven electron heat flux is influenced by the safety factor q, electron beta β e and normalized electron Debye length λ D , in addition to well-established parameters such as the electron temperature and density gradients. To assess the trustworthiness of our model's predictions beyond training, we compute prediction intervals using bootstrapping. The surrogate model's predictive power is tested across a wide range of parameter values, including within-distribution testing parameters (to verify our model) as well as out-of-bounds and out-of-distribution testing (to validate the proposed model). Overall, validation efforts show that our model competes well with, or can even outperform, existing scaling laws in predicting ETG-driven transport.
fusion plasma↗
On the effect of negative triangularity on ion temperature gradient turbulence in tokamaks
Considering the same magnetic equilibrium and plasma conditions as in Duff et al., we perform linear and nonlinear simulations of electrostatic ion temperature gradient turbulence investigating the role of triangularity δ. Differently from what was previously reported, we find that triangularity increases the transport level regardless of its sign, but more strongly when δ is positive. Here, for the case analyzed, we identify the shear of triangularity as the critical parameter determining the transport level, indicating that even in the local limit negative triangularity can reduce the transport efficiently, suggesting that confinement improvement can also be expected for larger devices.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
First-principles based plasma profile predictions for optimized stellarators
In the present Letter, first-of-its-kind computer simulations predicting plasma profiles for modern optimized stellarators—while self-consistently retaining neoclassical transport, turbulent transport with 3D effects, and external physical sources—are presented. These simulations exploit a newly developed coupling framework involving the global gyrokinetic turbulence code GENE-3D, the neoclassical transport code KNOSOS, and the 1D transport solver TANGO. This framework is used to analyze the recently observed degradation of energy confinement in electron-heated plasmas in the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, where the central ion temperature was 'clamped' to $T_\textrm i \approx 1.5$ keV regardless of the external heating power. By performing first-principles based simulations, we provide key evidence to understand this effect, namely the inefficient thermal coupling between electrons and ions in a turbulence-dominated regime, which is exacerbated by the large $T_\textrm e/T_\textrm i$ ratios, and show that a more efficient ion heat source, such as direct ion heating, will increase the on-axis ion temperature. This work paves the way towards the use of high-fidelity models for the development of the next generation of stellarators, in which neoclassical and turbulent transport are optimized simultaneously.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗