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Results for “PLASMA EXPANSION”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,009 records · Page 56
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1989

Analysis and test of insulated components for rotary engine

The direct-injection stratified-charge (DISC) rotary engine, while attractive for aviation applications due to its light weight, multifuel capability, and potentially low fuel consumption, has until now required a bulky and heavy liquid-cooling system. NASA-Lewis has undertaken the development of a cooling system-obviating, thermodynamically superior adiabatic rotary engine employing state-of-the-art thermal barrier coatings to thermally insulate engine components. The thermal barrier coating material for the cast aluminum, stainless steel, and ductile cast iron components was plasma-sprayed zirconia. DISC engine tests indicate effective thermal barrier-based heat loss reduction, but call for superior coefficient-of-thermal-expansion matching of materials and better tribological properties in the coatings used.

Badgley, Patrick R.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Two-dimensional model of a slow-mode expansion fan at Io

A 2D model for the standing slow-mode expansion fan that is expected to exist downstream of the Jovian moon Io is developed. The leading edge of the expansion fan makes an angle of 45 deg with the upstream magnetic field direction, and the fan width is about 114 deg. The plasma flow returns to its upstream direction by way of a slow-mode shock behind Io where the MHD parameters return asymptotically to their upstream conditions. The magnetic field perturbation within the fan is much smaller than that associated with the Alfven wing, which lies farther upstream.

Krisko, P. H.↗
DOE OSTI2013

Role of an ultra-thin AlN/GaN superlattice interlayer on the strain engineering of GaN films grown on Si(110) and Si(111) substrates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy

We investigate the role of an ultra-thin AlN/GaN superlattice interlayer (SL-IL) on the strain engineering of the GaN films grown on Si(110) and Si(111) substrates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. It is found that micro-cracks limitted only at the SL-IL position are naturally generated. These micro-cracks play an important role in relaxing the tensile strain caused by the difference of the coefficient of thermal expansion between GaN and Si and keeping the residual strain in the crack-free GaN epilayers resulted from the SL-IL during the growth. The mechanism understanding of the strain modulation by the SL-IL in the GaN epilayers grown on Si substrates makes it possible to design new heterostructures of III-nitrides for optic and electronic device applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Bidimensional Particle-In-Cell simulations for laser-driven proton acceleration using ultra-short, ultra-high contrast laser

In this paper, we report on bi-dimensional Particle-In-Cell simulations performed in order to reproduce the laser-driven proton acceleration obtained when a commercial 200 TW Ti:Sa Laser hits a solid target. The laser-to prepulse contrast was enhanced using plasma mirrors yielding to a main-to-prepulse contrast of ∼10{sup 12}. We varied the pulse duration from 30 fs to 500 fs and the target thickness from 30 nm to several tens of μm. The on-target laser energy was up to 1.8 J leading to an intensity in excess of 10{sup 20 }W cm{sup −2}. A comparison between numerical and existing experimental data [S. Fourmaux et al., Phys. Plasmas 20, 013110 (2013)] is performed, showing a good agreement between experimental results and simulations which confirms that for ultra-thin targets there is an optimum expansion regime. This regime depends on the target thickness and on the laser intensity: if the target is too expanded, the laser travels through the target without being able to deposit its energy within the target. If the target is not sufficiently expanded, the laser energy is reflected by the target. It is important to note that maximum proton energies are reached at longer pulse durations (in the 100 fs regime) than what is currently the best compression pulse length for this type of lasers (typically 20–30 fs). This duration, around 50–100 fs, can be considered a minimum energy transfer time between hot electrons to ions during the considered acceleration process.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Absorption of resonance laser radiation in ultracold plasma

The absorption of resonance laser radiation in an expanding ultracold plasma is considered. Initially the optical thickness τ {sub 0} of the medium decreases due to correlation heating of the ions; the subsequent lowering of τ {sub 0} is due to the variation of radial ion velocities. The expanding optically thick medium is shown to become transparent when the ratio between the particle expansion velocity at the sphere boundary and the thermal velocity exceeds the optical thickness τ {sub 0}.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Zonal-flow dynamics from a phase-space perspective

The wave kinetic equation (WKE) describing drift-wave (DW) turbulence is widely used in the studies of zonal flows (ZFs) emerging from DW turbulence. But, this formulation neglects the exchange of enstrophy between DWs and ZFs and also ignores effects beyond the geometrical-optics limit. Furthermore, we derive a modified theory that takes both of these effects into account, while still treating DW quanta (“driftons”) as particles in phase space. The drifton dynamics is described by an equation of the Wigner–Moyal type, which is commonly known in the phase-space formulation of quantum mechanics. In the geometrical-optics limit, this formulation features additional terms missing in the traditional WKE that ensure exact conservation of the total enstrophy of the system, in addition to the total energy, which is the only conserved invariant in previous theories based on the WKE. We present numerical simulations to illustrate the importance of these additional terms. The proposed formulation can be considered as a phase-space representation of the second-order cumulant expansion, or CE2.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Pressure drop in a prototypical 3D magnetohydrodynamic flow across contraction of a fusion blanket manifold

Predicting 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) pressure losses associated with liquid metal flows in complex geometry ducts is required to design breeding blankets for fusion reactors. Of such components, manifolds exhibit major pressure losses. Recent correlations [T. Rhodeset al. Magnetohydrodynamic pressure drop and flow balancing of liquid metal flow in a prototypic fusion blanket manifold. Phys. Fluids. 2018; 30: 057101.] demonstrate promise for predicting pressure drops in electrically insulated inlet manifolds. In the present work, the extend to which these correlations can be applied to outlet manifolds, which feature sudden contractions, is investigated in both viscous-electromagnetic (VE) and inertial-electromagnetic (IE) regimes for Reynolds numbers 50 < Re < 1500, Hartmann numbers 2500 < Ha < 5475, and expansion/contraction ratio 10. Numerical computations have shown that the MHD pressure drops in the eutectic lead-lithium (PbLi) flows in contractions are almost identical to those in the flows featuring expansion with slightly higher magnitudes in the contraction cases. The small discripancy in the MHD pressure drop between contractions and expansions (<8%) suggests that the earlier obtained correlations for the 3D MHD pressure drop in a duct flow with a sudden expansion can also be applied to flows with a sudden contraction.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1988

Asessment of the boundary layer model of the magnetospheric substorm

Data on energetic protons, thermal electrons, and magnetic field characteristics obtained by the ISEE 3 in the magnetotail at the distance of 80 R(E) from the earth were analyzed. Many features were found that were present in the ISEE 1 and 2 data. In particular, flow directions of the plasma observed at 80 R(E) were found to be quite consistent with the formation of the near-earth neutral line during the expansion phase, giving further support to the near-earth reconnection model of the magnetospheric substorm described by Eastman et al. (1985).

Nishida, A.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Interactions between spacecraft and their environments

Spacecraft inevitably interact with their environments. Besides the interactions one immediately thinks of in space (zero-g, solar heating, atmospheric drag, expansion into vacuum conditions, etc.) other interactions are also important. Those of interest to spacecraft designers so far may be grouped under several headings; plasma interactions and spacecraft charging, impact of debris and micrometeoroids, chemical reactions with neutral species, radiation degradation, etc. Researchers have made great progress in defining and evaluating the interactions of spacecraft with their expected ambient environments near Earth and in interplanetary space. Some of these interactions are discussed with an eye toward expanding our knowledge into new environments, such as may be found at the moon and Mars, that will interact in new and different ways with exploring spacecraft and spacefarers.

Ferguson, Dale C.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Formation of the stable auroral arc that intensifies at substorm onset

In a companion paper, we present observational evidence that the stable, growth-phase auroral arc that intensifies at substorm expansion phase onset often forms on magnetic field lines that map to within approximately 1 to 2 R(sub e) of synchronous. The equatorial plasma pressure is 1 to 10 nPa in this region, which can give a cross-tail current greater than 0.1 A/m. In this paper, we propose that the arc is formed by a perpendicular magnetospheric-current divergence that results from a strong dawn-to-dusk directed pressure gradient in the vicinity of magnetic midnight. We estimate that the current divergence is sufficiently strong that a is greater than 1 kV field-aligned potential drop is required to maintain ionospheric-current continuity. We suggest that the azimuthal pressure gradient results from proton drifts in the vicinity of synchronous orbit that are directed nearly parallel to the cross-tail electric field.

Lyons, L. R.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Observations of CMEs and Models of the Eruptive Corona

It is now realized that coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are the most energetic phenomenon in the heliosphere. Although early observations (in the 1970s and 19805) revealed most of the properties of CMEs, it is the extended and uniform data set from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission that helped us consolidate our knowledge on CMEs. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission has provided direct confirmation of the three-dimensional structure of CMEs. The broadside view provided by the STEREO coronagraphs helped us estimate the width of the halo CMEs and hence validate CME cone models. Current theoretical ideas on the internal structure of CMEs suggest that a flux rope is central to the CME structure, which has considerable observational support both from remote-sensing and in-situ observations. The flux-rope nature is also consistent with the post-eruption arcades with high-temperature plasma and the charge states observed within CMEs arriving at Earth. The quadrature observations also helped us understand the relation between the radial and expansion speeds of CMEs, which were only known from empirical relations in the past. This paper highlights some of these results obtained during solar cycle 23 and 24 and discusses implications for CME models.

Gopalswamy, Nat↗
DOE OSTI2017

First Detection of Prominence Material Embedded within a 2 × 10{sup 6} K CME Front Streaming away at 100–1500 km s{sup −1} in the Solar Corona

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are the largest and most dynamic explosions detected in the million degree solar corona, with speeds reaching up to 3000 km s{sup −1} at Earth’s orbit. Triggered by the eruption of prominences, in most cases, one of the outstanding questions pertaining to the dynamic CME-prominence system is the fate of the cool 10{sup 4}--10{sup 5} K ejected filaments. We present spectroscopic observations acquired during the 2015 March 20 total solar eclipse, which captured a plethora of redshifted plasmoids from Fe xiv emission at 2×10{sup 6} K. Approximately 10% of these plasmoids enshrouded the same neutral and singly ionized plasma below 2×10{sup 5} K, observed in prominences anchored at the Sun at that time. This discovery was enabled by the novel design of a dual-channel spectrometer and the exceptionally clear sky conditions on the island of Svalbard during totality. The Doppler redshifts corresponded to speeds ranging from under 100 to over 1500 km s{sup −1}. These are the first comprehensive spectroscopic observations to unambiguously detect a 2×10{sup 6} K filamentary CME front with inclusions of cool prominence material. The CME front covered a projected area of 2.5×1.5 R{sub s}{sup 2} starting from the solar surface. These observations imply that cool prominence inclusions within a CME front maintain their ionic composition during expansion away from the Sun.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Grassy ELM regime at low pedestal collisionality in high-power tokamak plasma

Spontaneous mitigation of giant ELMs and appearance of grassy ELMs have been observed repeatedly at low pedestal collisionality (${\nu }_{\mathrm{e},\mathrm{p}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{d}}^{{\ast}}\sim 0.15$) in the high-power (P inj > 13 MW) hybrid scenario in DIII-D. Higher β p and higher q 95 appear to be beneficial to achieving the grassy ELM regime. The grassy ELM H-mode plasma shows high energy confinement performance (H 98y2 up to over 1.5) under the conditions of high neutral beam torque and high core rotation. The pedestal width appears to exceed the EPED1.0 model prediction by more than 50%. Pedestal stability analysis performed with the ELITE code indicates that the stability against low-n kink/peeling modes is improved with increased auxiliary heating power and the operational point in the grassy ELM regime is located near the ballooning boundary. The pedestal stability characteristics during the grassy ELM crashes have been investigated in comparison with the giant ELM crashes based on plasma profiles experimentally measured with high resolution and accuracy. It has been found that the underlying mechanism for the observed small-amplitude ELM crashes is mainly the expansion of the ballooning stability boundary induced by an initial radially localized collapse in the pedestal, which helps to stop the growth of instabilities and further collapse of the pedestal. The effect of electron density pedestal on mitigating edge localized instabilities has been analyzed by numerical simulation, suggesting that the electron density pedestal characterized by high n e,sep /n e,ped and low density gradient helps to stabilize peeling-ballooning modes because of a low pressure pedestal gradient and to lower the ballooning boundary mainly because of a low ion diamagnetic frequency in the pedestal region, thus triggering ballooning instabilities and producing the intrinsic grassy ELMs. Numerical simulation of the Chinese fusion engineering test reactor (CFETR) with the SOLPS code indicates that the separatrix density might be insensitive to the electron diffusivity in the pedestal region and increase with the power flowing from the core region to the edge region. Furthermore, pedestal stability analysis suggests that the flat density pedestal with high separatrix density obtained in the high-power plasma in CFETR would make the operational point close to the ballooning boundary, which is considered to help destabilize ballooning instabilities and facilitate the access to the grassy ELM regime.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1994

Ground-based studies of ionospheric convection associated with substorm expansion

The instantaneous patterns of electric fields and currents in the high-latitude ionosphere are deduced by combining satellite and radar measurements of the ionospheric drift velocity, along with ground-based magnetometer observations for October 25, 1981. The period under study was characterized by a relatively stable southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), so that the obtained electric field patterns do reflect, in general, the state of sustained and enhanced plasma convection in the magnetosphere. During one of the satellite passes, however, an intense westward electrojet caused by a substorm intruded into the satellite (DE2) and radar (Chatanika, Alaska) field of view in the premidnight sector, providing a unique opportunity to differentiate the enhanced convection and substorm expansion fields. The distributions of the calculated electric potential for the expansion and maximum phases of the substorm show the first clear evidence of the coexistence of two physically different systems in the global convection pattern. The changes in the convection pattern during the substorm indicate that the large-scale potential distributions are indeed of general two-cell patterns representing the southward IMF status, but the night-morning cell has two positive peaks, one in the midnight sector and the other in the late morning hours, corresponding to the substorm expansion and the convection enhancement, respectively.

Kamide, Y.↗
DOE OSTI2018

An adaptive least-squares global sensitivity method and application to a plasma-coupled combustion prediction with parametric correlation

We introduce an efficient non-intrusive surrogate-based methodology for global sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification. Modified covariance-based sensitivity indices (mCov-SI) are defined for outputs that reflect correlated effects. The overall approach is applied to simulations of a complex plasma-coupled combustion system with disparate uncertain parameters in sub-models for chemical kinetics and a laser-induced breakdown ignition seed. The surrogate is based on an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) expansion, such as widely used in statistics, with orthogonal polynomials representing the ANOVA subspaces and a polynomial dimensional decomposition (PDD) representing its multi-dimensional components. The coefficients of the PDD expansion are obtained using a least-squares regression, which both avoids the direct computation of high-dimensional integrals and affords an attractive flexibility in choosing sampling points. This facilitates importance sampling using a Bayesian calibrated posterior distribution, which is fast and thus particularly advantageous in common practical cases, such as our large-scale demonstration, for which the asymptotic convergence properties of polynomial expansions cannot be realized due to computation expense. Effort, instead, is focused on efficient finite-resolution sampling. Standard covariance-based sensitivity indices (Cov-SI) are employed to account for correlation of the uncertain parameters. Magnitude of Cov-SI is unfortunately unbounded, which can produce extremely large indices that limit their utility. Alternatively, mCov-SI are then proposed in order to bound this magnitude $\in$ [0, 1]. The polynomial expansion is coupled with an adaptive ANOVA strategy to provide an accurate surrogate as the union of several low-dimensional spaces, avoiding the typical computational cost of a high-dimensional expansion. It is also adaptively simplified according to the relative contribution of the different polynomials to the total variance. Finally, the approach is demonstrated for a laser-induced turbulent combustion simulation model, which includes parameters with correlated effects.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2015

Magnetohydrodynamic structure of a plasmoid in fast reconnection in low-beta plasmas: Shock-shock interactions

The shock structure of a plasmoid in magnetic reconnection in low-beta plasmas is investigated by two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations. Using a high-accuracy code with unprecedented resolution, shocks, discontinuities, and their intersections are resolved and clarified. Contact discontinuities emanate from triple-shock intersection points, separating fluids of different origins. Shock-diamonds inside the plasmoid appear to decelerate a supersonic flow. New shock-diamonds and a slow expansion fan are found inside the Petschek outflow. A sufficient condition for the new shock-diamonds and the relevance to astrophysical jets are discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Upgrade of the BATMAN test facility for H{sup −} source development

The development of a radio frequency (RF) driven source for negative hydrogen ions for the neutral beam heating devices of fusion experiments has been successfully carried out at IPP since 1996 on the test facility BATMAN. The required ITER parameters have been achieved with the prototype source consisting of a cylindrical driver on the back side of a racetrack like expansion chamber. The extraction system, called “Large Area Grid” (LAG) was derived from a positive ion accelerator from ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) using its aperture size (ø 8 mm) and pattern but replacing the first two electrodes and masking down the extraction area to 70 cm2. BATMAN is a well diagnosed and highly flexible test facility which will be kept operational in parallel to the half size ITER source test facility ELISE for further developments to improve the RF efficiency and the beam properties. It is therefore planned to upgrade BATMAN with a new ITER-like grid system (ILG) representing almost one ITER beamlet group, namely 5 × 14 apertures (ø 14 mm). Additionally to the standard three grid extraction system a repeller electrode upstream of the grounded grid can optionally be installed which is positively charged against it by 2 kV. This is designated to affect the onset of the space charge compensation downstream of the grounded grid and to reduce the backstreaming of positive ions from the drift space backwards into the ion source. For magnetic filter field studies a plasma grid current up to 3 kA will be available as well as permanent magnets embedded into a diagnostic flange or in an external magnet frame. Furthermore different source vessels and source configurations are under discussion for BATMAN, e.g. using the AUG type racetrack RF source as driver instead of the circular one or modifying the expansion chamber for a more flexible position of the external magnet frame.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗