Thermal Hydraulics Analysis of a Divertor Monoblock Using SALAMANDER

Abstract

Divertors are critical components in magnetic confinement fusion devices. One of the Divertor's crictial roles is absorbing the highest heat flux from the plasma. The Divertor accomplishes this through the use of divertor monoblocks and cooling channels. This work presents a thermal hydraulic analysis of a divertor monoblock using the Software for Advanced Large-scale Analysis of MAgnetic confinement for Numerical Design, Engineering and Research (SALAMANDER). SALAMANDER is an open source tool developed at Idaho National Laboratory for conducting multiphysics and multscale analysis of Plasma Facing Components (PFCs). For the monoblock, solid heat conduction is modeled in the block with a constant heat flux of 1E7 W/m^2 applied to the top of the block to represent peak heat flux from the plasma. The cooling channel (which is pressurized water at a Reynolds number of ~1,000,000) is modeled using a k-epsilon turbulence model with standard wall functions. The heat transfer between the solid and fluid domain is modeled using the Dittus-Boelter correlation for the convective heat transfer coefficient. This work aims to show the importance of a multiphysics modeling approach when performing simulations on PFCs.