The Fusion Group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and the National Fusion Laboratory at CIEMAT (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas) have actively collaborated for more than ten years. Over the recent years, the collaboration has focused on the modelling of plasma instabilities in the CIEMAT-based TJ-II stellarator device. It has recently resulted in a publication in the Nuclear Fusion journal and a related follow-up project on the modelling of energetic particle behaviour in TJ-II plasmas.
Group
Fusion group participates in BSC annual meeting
On 20 January, Barcelona Supercomputing Center held the 2018 Annual Meeting in the UPC Vèrtex building Auditori (auditorium). In this event, Mateo Valero, BSC director, and Josep Martorell, BSC associate director, reviewed the achievements reached in 2018 and the expected projects in the future.
Our new journal paper in Nuclear Fusion
Our journal article entitled “Modelling of beam-driven Alfvén modes in TJ-II plasmas” has been accepted for publication in Nuclear Fusion. Nuclear Fusion is one of the renowned journals in our field.
The paper reports on our modelling results aimed at understanding a certain type of energetic-particle-driven instabilities called Alfvén modes in TJ-II stellarator plasmas and their comparisons with experimental results. In particular, we have modelled Alfvén eigenmodes in TJ-II discharges with a dynamically changing magnetic configuration when both steady and chirping modes are observed. The modelled mode frequencies and radial locations are found to be consistent with the experimental findings. We also have drawn important conclusions on the properties of the energetic particles that are resonant with the modes.
The journal article can be found via this link.
WPCD Code Camp at Innsbruck with Gloria Falchetto
This week, WPCD developers from all around EUROfusion countries have met at Innsbruck, Austria, in the last WPCD code camp of 2018. 37 participants have been working on various activities, all of them aligned towards the European integrated modelling efforts. Discussions have been carried out in the integration of codes within the IMAS (Integrated Modelling & Analysis Suite) ant ITM aiming to bring together codes from fusion research centers.
Group member presents her Master Thesis with flying colours
Our Fusion group member Alba Gordó presented her Master’s thesis in Modelling for Science and Engineering entitled “Computational study of defects in tungsten crystals by means of density functional theory” on the 14th of September.
The work was based on the research she has been carrying out since last March in our group and in close collaboration with the Materials group at the CASE department at BSC, under the supervision of Dr. Stephan Mohr and Prof. Dr. Mervi Mantsinen. The defense took place at the Faculty of Sciences of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and was graded with a top mark, proving the relevance and originality of it.