MHD modeling of a DIII-D low-torque QH-mode discharge and comparison to observations

摘要

Extended-MHD modeling of DIII-D tokamak [J. L. Luxon, Nucl. Fusion 42, 614 (2002)] quiescent H-mode (QH-mode) discharges with nonlinear NIMROD [C. R. Sovinec et al., J. Comput. Phys. 195, 355 (2004)] simulations saturates into a turbulent state but does not saturate when the steadystate flow inferred from measurements is not included. This is consistent with the experimental observations of the quiescent regime on DIII-D. The simulation with flow develops into a saturated turbulent state where the n_? = 1 and 2 toroidal modes become dominant through an inverse cascade. Each mode in the range of n_? = 1-5 is dominant at a different time. Consistent with experimental observations during QH-mode, the simulated state leads to large particle transport relative to the thermal transport. Analysis shows that the amplitude and phase of the density and temperature perturbations differ resulting in greater fluctuation-induced convective particle transport relative to the convective thermal transport. Comparison to magnetic-coil measurements shows that rotation frequencies differ between the simulation and experiment, which indicates that more sophisticated extended-MHD two-fluid modeling is required. Published by AIP Publishing.