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RESEARCH FIELD(S)1
Physical Sciences / Computational Sciences / Engineering
JOB DESCRIPTION
The control of heat and particle fluxes onto the tokamak walls at high heat confinement performance is a critical issue to be addressed in future ITER experiments. Sustaining burning plasmas close to ignition conditions while achieving sufficient power spreading on the dedicated divertor components imposes stringent constraints on the operational window of these plasmas. This calls for the design of optimized scenarios for ITER dedicated to controlling the heat flow from the thermonuclear source to the divertor. The design of such optimized scenarios for ITER will require reliable numerical simulations with novel capability to predict turbulent transport and plasma wall interactions in global realistic geometry. A one-year postdoctoral position (renewable) is opened between the M2P2 laboratory in Marseilles, the research group on fusion modelling at CEA Cadarache and the Aix-Marseille University computing center to sustain the simulation activity of tokamak plasmas. This job is dedicated to the development and the optimization of a new hybridizable discontinous Galerkin solver which has been recently implemented in the code SOLEDGE2D-HDG (Giorgiani et al. JCP (submitted)), part of our well-referenced numerical fluid platform SOLEDGE2D-EIRENE (Bufferand et al. Nuc. Fus. 2015). On contrary to most of the codes presently running in the fusion community, SOLEDGE2D-HDG implements a high-order numerical scheme, whose the enhanced accuracy allows us to use meshes that are not aligned on the magnetic field lines nor flux surfaces, and therefore are independent on the geometrical features of the magnetic equilibrium. These features will allow us to address for the first time in the landscape of plasma transport codes heat exhaust physics in non-steady magnetic configurations that can prove to be critical in most plasma scenarios. Such conditions are met at plasma breakdown, later in the current ramp-up when the magnetic field evolves from limiter to divertor configuration, and also during flat top operation, for instance when sweeping the divertor strike points or with MHD relaxation event such as sawteeth. Associated to unstructured meshes, this solver will allow in addition to accurately discretize any realistic tokamak chamber.
During this work, performances improvement of this new HDG solver is expected from the implementation of advanced time discretization schemes, extension to 3D geometry as well as in the optimization of Open/MPI paradigm. This numerical activity will be associated to plasma simulations in realistic tokamak geometry, and in close connection with experimental analysis on WEST (http://west.cea.fr/en/index.php). This work will be carried out in close connection between applied mathematicians and numericists from Aix-Marseille University and plasma physicists at CEA Cadarache. It is part of the EUROfusion TSVV project Edge boundary code recently granted by the Euratom research and training programme. The position is fixed-term up to 12 months.
QUALIFICATIONS/SKILLS/EDUCATION & RESEARCH REQUIREMENTS
PhD in Physics / Fluid Mechanics / Applied Mathematics
APPLICATION DEADLINE
End of JULY 2021
STARTING DATE
13 MARCH 2021
JOB LOCATION
M2P2 Lab, UMR CNRS 7340, Marseille (FR)
CONTACT TO APPLY eric.serre@univ-amu.fr
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