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Effect of Plasma Temperature and Nonlinearity of the Adiabatic Compressibility Index on Flow Parameters for Hypersonic Aerosol Expansion Following a Plasma Disruption

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Abstract

Future fusion reactors are expected to experience hard current disruptions that quench the confined plasma and depositing the energy on the plasma facing materials, thus causing surface ablation and the evolving aerosol expands into the reactor chamber. The plasma flow following a disruption event can be simulated experimentally and computationally using confined capillary discharges, which generate heat fluxes (up to ~80 GW/m2) typical to those expected in fusion reactors during a disruption. Computational technique to investigate the effect of plasma temperature on the adiabatic compressibility index has been investigated using a pulsed disruptive capillary electrothermal plasma source with a converging–diverging transition nozzle at the exit attached to the expansion regions. The plasma is formed in the capillary due to thermal decomposition of the ablating inner wall followed by subsequent ionization of the decomposed material. This work is particular to the cases where the ejected particulates coming out from a heat-load affected surface or arc-triggered plasma source orifice are at the sonic speed. The converging section in the nozzle provides a transition from the capillary exit subsonic condition to sonic state, which allows for observing the effect of temperature on the supersonic isentropic expansion. Mathematical model has been developed for effective atomic number (Z eff ) as function of the plasma temperature and has been used to model the adiabatic compressibility index (γ p ) of the plasma. Plasma parameters along the axial direction of the flow in the transition and the expansion regions are obtained.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7909, USA

    Rudrodip Majumdar & Mohamed Bourham

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  1. Rudrodip Majumdar
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  2. Mohamed Bourham
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Correspondence to Mohamed Bourham.

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Majumdar, R., Bourham, M. Effect of Plasma Temperature and Nonlinearity of the Adiabatic Compressibility Index on Flow Parameters for Hypersonic Aerosol Expansion Following a Plasma Disruption. J Fusion Energ 34, 1269–1277 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-015-9960-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-015-9960-1

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