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At least 271 records · Page 15

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DOE OSTI2016

An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations

This paper evaluates the performance of multiphysics coupling algorithms applied to a light water nuclear reactor core simulation. The simulation couples the k-eigenvalue form of the neutron transport equation with heat conduction and subchannel flow equations. We compare Picard iteration (block Gauss–Seidel) to Anderson acceleration and multiple variants of preconditioned Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov (JFNK). The performance of the methods are evaluated over a range of energy group structures and core power levels. A novel physics-based approximation to a Jacobian-vector product has been developed to mitigate the impact of expensive on-line cross section processing steps. Numerical simulations demonstrating the efficiency of JFNK and Anderson acceleration relative to standard Picard iteration are performed on a 3D model of a nuclear fuel assembly. Both criticality (k-eigenvalue) and critical boron search problems are considered.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2023

G4CMP: Condensed matter physics simulation using the G$\scriptsize{\mathrm{EANT}}$4 toolkit

G4CMP simulates phonon and charge transport in cryogenic semiconductor crystals using the Geant4 toolkit. The transport code is capable of simulating the propagation of acoustic phonons as well as electron and hole charge carriers. Herein processes for anisotropic phonon propagation, oblique charge-carrier propagation, and phonon emission by accelerated charge carriers are included. The simulation reproduces theoretical predictions and experimental observations such as phonon caustics, heat-pulse propagation times, and mean charge-carrier drift velocities. In addition to presenting the physics and features supported by G4CMP, this report outlines example applications from the dark matter and quantum information science communities. These communities are applying G4CMP to model and design devices for which the energy transported by phonons and charge carriers is germane to the performance of superconducting instruments and circuits placed on silicon and germanium substrates. The G4CMP package is available to download from GitHub: github.com/kelseymh/G4CMP.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2011

Heat transfer simulation and thermal measurements of microfabricated x-ray transparent heater stages

A microfabricated amorphous silicon nitride membrane-based nanocalorimeter is proposed to be suitable for an x-ray transparent sample platform with low power heating and built-in temperature sensing. In this work, thermal characterization in both air and vacuum are analyzed experimentally and via simulation. Infrared microscopy and thermoreflectance microscopy are used for thermal imaging of the sample area in air. While a reasonably large isothermal area is found on the sample area, the temperature homogeneity of the entire sample area is low, limiting use of the device as a heater stage in air or other gases. A simulation model that includes conduction, as well as radiation and convection heat loss, is presented with radiation and convection parameters determined experimentally. Simulated temperature distributions show that the homogeneity can be improved by using a thicker thermal conduction layer or reducing the pressure of the gas in the environment but neither are good solutions for the proposed use. A new simple design that has improved temperature homogeneity and a larger isothermal area while maintaining a thin thermal conduction layer is proposed and fabricated. This new design enables applications in transmission x-ray microscopes and spectroscopy setups at atmospheric pressure.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2012

Simulation of microtearing turbulence in national spherical torus experiment

Thermal energy confinement times in National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) dimensionless parameter scans increase with decreasing collisionality. While ion thermal transport is neoclassical, the source of anomalous electron thermal transport in these discharges remains unclear, leading to considerable uncertainty when extrapolating to future spherical tokamak (ST) devices at much lower collisionality. Linear gyrokinetic simulations find microtearing modes to be unstable in high collisionality discharges. First non-linear gyrokinetic simulations of microtearing turbulence in NSTX show they can yield experimental levels of transport. Magnetic flutter is responsible for almost all the transport ({approx}98%), perturbed field line trajectories are globally stochastic, and a test particle stochastic transport model agrees to within 25% of the simulated transport. Most significantly, microtearing transport is predicted to increase with electron collisionality, consistent with the observed NSTX confinement scaling. While this suggests microtearing modes may be the source of electron thermal transport, the predictions are also very sensitive to electron temperature gradient, indicating the scaling of the instability threshold is important. In addition, microtearing turbulence is susceptible to suppression via sheared E Multiplication-Sign B flows as experimental values of E Multiplication-Sign B shear (comparable to the linear growth rates) dramatically reduce the transport below experimental values. Refinements in numerical resolution and physics model assumptions are expected to minimize the apparent discrepancy. In cases where the predicted transport is strong, calculations suggest that a proposed polarimetry diagnostic may be sensitive to the magnetic perturbations associated with the unique structure of microtearing turbulence.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2013

Electromagnetic instability of thin reconnection layers: Comparison of three-dimensional simulations with MRX observations

In this study, the influence of current-aligned instabilities on magnetic reconnection in weakly collisional regimes is investigated using experimental observations from Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) [M. Yamada et al., Phys. Plasmas 4, 1936 (1997)] and large-scale fully kinetic simulations. In the simulations as well as in the experiment, the dominant instability is localized near the center of the reconnection layer, produces large perturbations of the magnetic field, and is characterized by the wavenumber that is a geometric mean between electron and ion gyroradii k~(ρ e ρ i ) -1/2 . However, both the simulations and the experimental observations suggest the instability is not the dominant reconnection mechanism under parameters typical of MRX.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2014

Parallel continuous simulated tempering and its applications in large-scale molecular simulations

In this paper, we introduce a parallel continuous simulated tempering (PCST) method for enhanced sampling in studying large complex systems. It mainly inherits the continuous simulated tempering (CST) method in our previous studies [C. Zhang and J. Ma, J. Chem. Phys. 130, 194112 (2009); C. Zhang and J. Ma, J. Chem. Phys. 132, 244101 (2010)], while adopts the spirit of parallel tempering (PT), or replica exchange method, by employing multiple copies with different temperature distributions. Differing from conventional PT methods, despite the large stride of total temperature range, the PCST method requires very few copies of simulations, typically 2–3 copies, yet it is still capable of maintaining a high rate of exchange between neighboring copies. Furthermore, in PCST method, the size of the system does not dramatically affect the number of copy needed because the exchange rate is independent of total potential energy, thus providing an enormous advantage over conventional PT methods in studying very large systems. The sampling efficiency of PCST was tested in two-dimensional Ising model, Lennard-Jones liquid and all-atom folding simulation of a small globular protein trp-cage in explicit solvent. The results demonstrate that the PCST method significantly improves sampling efficiency compared with other methods and it is particularly effective in simulating systems with long relaxation time or correlation time. We expect the PCST method to be a good alternative to parallel tempering methods in simulating large systems such as phase transition and dynamics of macromolecules in explicit solvent.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2014

A geophysical shock and air blast simulator at the National Ignition Facility

The energy partitioning energy coupling experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have been designed to measure simultaneously the coupling of energy from a laser-driven target into both ground shock and air blast overpressure to nearby media. The source target for the experiment is positioned at a known height above the ground-surface simulant and is heated by four beams from the NIF. The resulting target energy density and specific energy are equal to those of a low-yield nuclear device. The ground-shock stress waves and atmospheric overpressure waveforms that result in our test system are hydrodynamically scaled analogs of full-scale seismic and air blast phenomena. This report summarizes the development of the platform, the simulations, and calculations that underpin the physics measurements that are being made, and finally the data that were measured. Agreement between the data and simulation of the order of a factor of two to three is seen for air blast quantities such as peak overpressure. Historical underground test data for seismic phenomena measured sensor displacements; we measure the stresses generated in our ground-surrogate medium. We find factors-of-a-few agreement between our measured peak stresses and predictions with modern geophysical computer codes.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2014

Kinetic simulations and reduced modeling of longitudinal sideband instabilities in non-linear electron plasma waves

Kinetic Vlasov simulations of one-dimensional finite amplitude Electron Plasma Waves are performed in a multi-wavelength long system. A systematic study of the most unstable linear sideband mode, in particular its growth rate γ and quasi- wavenumber δk, is carried out by scanning the amplitude and wavenumber of the initial wave. Simulation results are successfully compared against numerical and analytical solutions to the reduced model by Kruer et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 23, 838 (1969)] for the Trapped Particle Instability (TPI). A model recently suggested by Dodin et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 215006 (2013)], which in addition to the TPI accounts for the so-called Negative Mass Instability because of a more detailed representation of the trapped particle dynamics, is also studied and compared with simulations.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2014

Study of the L-mode tokamak plasma “shortfall” with local and global nonlinear gyrokinetic δf particle-in-cell simulation

The δ f particle-in-cell code GEM is used to study the transport “shortfall” problem of gyrokinetic simulations. In local simulations, the GEM results confirm the previously reported simulation results of DIII-D [Holland et al., Phys. Plasmas 16, 052301 (2009)] and Alcator C-Mod [Howard et al., Nucl. Fusion 53, 123011 (2013)] tokamaks with the continuum code GYRO. Namely, for DIII-D the simulations closely predict the ion heat flux at the core, while substantially underpredict transport towards the edge; while for Alcator C-Mod, the simulations show agreement with the experimental values of ion heat flux, at least within the range of experimental error. Global simulations are carried out for DIII-D L-mode plasmas to study the effect of edge turbulence on the outer core ion heat transport. The edge turbulence enhances the outer core ion heat transport through turbulence spreading. However, this edge turbulence spreading effect is not enough to explain the transport underprediction.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2014

Verification of gyrokinetic particle simulation of current-driven instability in fusion plasmas. II. Resistive tearing mode

In this work, global gyrokinetic particle simulation of resistive tearing modes has been developed and verified in the gyrokinetic toroidal code (GTC). GTC linear simulations in the fluid limit of the kink-tearing and resistive tearing modes in the cylindrical geometry agree well with the resistive magnetohydrodynamic eigenvalue and initial value codes. Ion kinetic effects are discovered to reduce the radial width of the tearing modes. GTC simulations of the resistive tearing modes in the toroidal geometry find that the toroidicity reduces the growth rates.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2015

Comparisons between tokamak fueling of gas puffing and supersonic molecular beam injection in 2D simulations

Plasma fueling with high efficiency and deep injection is very important to enable fusion power performance requirements. It is a powerful and efficient way to study neutral transport dynamics and find methods of improving the fueling performance by doing large scale simulations. Two basic fueling methods, gas puffing (GP) and supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI), are simulated and compared in realistic divertor geometry of the HL-2A tokamak with a newly developed module, named trans-neut, within the framework of BOUT++ boundary plasma turbulence code [Z. H. Wang et al., Nucl. Fusion 54, 043019 (2014)]. The physical model includes plasma density, heat and momentum transport equations along with neutral density, and momentum transport equations. Transport dynamics and profile evolutions of both plasma and neutrals are simulated and compared between GP and SMBI in both poloidal and radial directions, which are quite different from one and the other. It finds that the neutrals can penetrate about four centimeters inside the last closed (magnetic) flux surface during SMBI, while they are all deposited outside of the LCF during GP. It is the radial convection and larger inflowing flux which lead to the deeper penetration depth of SMBI and higher fueling efficiency compared to GP.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2015

Self-consistent simulation of CdTe solar cells with active defects

We demonstrate a self-consistent numerical scheme for simulating an electronic device which contains active defects. As a specific case, we consider copper defects in cadmium telluride solar cells. The presence of copper has been shown experimentally to play a crucial role in predicting device performance. The primary source of this copper is migration away from the back contact during annealing, which likely occurs predominantly along grain boundaries. We introduce a mathematical scheme for simulating this effect in 2D and explain the numerical implementation of the system. Finally, we will give numerical results comparing our results to known 1D simulations to demonstrate the accuracy of the solver and then show results unique to the 2D case.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2015

Simulation of magnetic hysteresis loops and magnetic Barkhausen noise of α-iron containing nonmagnetic particles

Here, the magnetic hysteresis loops and Barkhausen noise of a single α-iron with nonmagnetic particles are simulated to investigate into the magnetic hardening due to Cu-rich precipitates in irradiated reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels. Phase field method basing Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation is used for this simulation. The results show that the presence of the nonmagnetic particle could result in magnetic hardening by making the nucleation of reversed domains difficult. The coercive field is found to increase, while the intensity of Barkhausen noise voltage is decreased when the nonmagnetic particle is introduced. Simulations demonstrate the impact of nucleation field of reversed domains on the magnetization reversal behavior and the magnetic properties.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2015

Three- and two-dimensional simulations of counter-propagating shear experiments at high energy densities at the National Ignition Facility

Three- and two-dimensional numerical studies have been carried out to simulate recent counter-propagating shear flow experiments on the National Ignition Facility. A multi-physics three-dimensional, time-dependent radiation hydrodynamics simulation code is used. Using a Reynolds Averaging Navier-Stokes model, we show that the evolution of the mixing layer width obtained from the simulations agrees well with that measured from the experiments. A sensitivity study is conducted to illustrate a 3D geometrical effect that could confuse the measurement at late times, if the energy drives from the two ends of the shock tube are asymmetric. Implications for future experiments are discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Vlasov simulations of electron-ion collision effects on damping of electron plasma waves

Collisional effects can play an essential role in the dynamics of plasma waves by setting a minimum damping rate and by interfering with wave-particle resonances. Kinetic simulations of the effects of electron-ion pitch angle scattering on Electron Plasma Waves (EPWs) are presented here. In particular, the effects of such collisions on the frequency and damping of small-amplitude EPWs for a range of collision rates and wave phase velocities are computed and compared with theory. Both the Vlasov simulations and linear kinetic theory find the direct contribution of electron-ion collisions to wave damping significantly reduced from that obtained through linearized fluid theory. To our knowledge, this simple result has not been published before. Simulations have been carried out using a grid-based (Vlasov) approach, based on a high-order conservative finite difference method for discretizing the Fokker-Planck equation describing the evolution of the electron distribution function. Details of the implementation of the collision operator within this framework are presented. Such a grid-based approach, which is not subject to numerical noise, is of particular interest for the accurate measurements of the wave damping rates.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Hybrid simulations of magnetic reconnection with kinetic ions and fluid electron pressure anisotropy

We present the first hybrid simulations with kinetic ions and recently developed equations of state for the electron fluid appropriate for reconnection with a guide field. The equations of state account for the main anisotropy of the electron pressure tensor.Magnetic reconnection is studied in two systems, an initially force-free current sheet and a Harris sheet. The hybrid model with the equations of state is compared to two other models, hybrid simulations with isothermal electrons and fully kinetic simulations. Including the anisotropicequations of state in the hybrid model provides a better match to the fully kinetic model. In agreement with fully kinetic results, the main feature captured is the formation of an electron current sheet that extends several ion inertial lengths. This electron current sheet modifies the Hall magnetic field structure near the X-line, and it is not observed in the standard hybrid model with isotropic electrons. The saturated reconnection rate in this regime nevertheless remains similar in all three models. Here, implications for global modeling are discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Gyrokinetic simulation of driftwave instability in field-reversed configuration

Following the recent remarkable progress in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability control in the C-2U advanced beam driven field-reversed configuration (FRC), turbulent transport has become one of the foremost obstacles on the path towards an FRC-based fusion reactor. Significant effort has been made to expand kinetic simulation capabilities in FRC magnetic geometry. The recently upgraded Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC) now accommodates realistic magnetic geometry from the C-2U experiment at Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. and is optimized to efficiently handle the FRC's magnetic field line orientation. Initial electrostatic GTC simulations find that ion-scale instabilities are linearly stable in the FRC core for realistic pressure gradient drives. Estimated instability thresholds from linear GTC simulations are qualitatively consistent with critical gradients determined from experimental Doppler backscattering fluctuation data, which also find ion scale modes to be depressed in the FRC core. Beyond GTC, A New Code (ANC) has been developed to accurately resolve the magnetic field separatrix and address the interaction between the core and scrape-off layer regions, which ultimately determines global plasma confinement in the FRC. The current status of ANC and future development targets are discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Nonlinear electromagnetic formulation for particle-in-cell simulation of lower hybrid waves in toroidal geometry

An electromagnetic particle simulation model has been formulated and verified for nonlinear processes of lower hybrid (LH) waves in fusion plasmas. Electron dynamics are described by the drift kinetic equation using either kinetic momentum or canonical momentum. Ion dynamics are treated as the fluid system or by the Vlasov equation. Compressible magnetic perturbation is retained to simulate both the fast and slow LH waves. Numerical properties are greatly improved by using the electron continuity equation to enforce the consistency between electrostatic potential and vector potential, and by using the importance sampling scheme. The simulation model has been implemented in the gyrokinetic toroidal code (GTC), and verified for the dispersion relation and nonlinear particle trapping of the electromagnetic LH waves.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗