The project ZONALGENE, led by Dr Jeronimo Garcia (CEA, France), has been awarded with computing time amongst the 117 proposals submitted in the 14th Call for PRACE Project Access. Our fusion group will collaborate in this project to perform non-linear analysis of zonal flow generation in magnetically confined plasmas on the new MareNostrum supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
This project will carry out simulations for studying plasma configurations in the ITER machine, which is a tokamak currently under construction in France in which a hot plasma is confined by strong magnetic fields. Turbulences are one of the most important physical mechanisms leading to a strong degradation of plasma confinement thereby to the point of interrupting the fusion process.
Understanding the physical mechanisms by which turbulent transport in magnetically confined plasmas is enhanced or reduced is a crucial task in the way to predict and optimize the performance of ITER. However, the dependence of small scales fluctuations (micro-turbulence) on the different plasma parameters is still not fully understood. This is in particular the case of the formation and damping of so-called zonal flows (large-scale flows similar to the atmospheric and oceanic flows, where zonal means latitudinal) and their dependence on different plasma conditions.
PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, provides access to Europe’s world class High Performance Computing Research Infrastructure (RI), enabling scientists and researchers from academia and industry to carry out complex and excellent experiments and simulations that address society’s grand challenges. The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 5 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, CSCS representing Switzerland, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France).
PRACE systems are available to scientists and researchers from academia and industry from around the world through open calls. All the applications are subject to a peer review process, where technical experts and leading scientists evaluate the proposals submitted, and finally the PRACE Access Committee select the best qualified and assign HPC resources to them.
Finally, the PRACE 15th Call for Proposals for Project Access is now open until 30 May 2017, 10:00 CEST.