Towards a MPEX Digital Twin

The Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX) is a currently constructed linear plasma device to test materials, including irradiated materials, to fusion divertor reactor relevant fluxes and fluences. This paper will show the high level plan and initial results towards the development of a MPEX digital twin to accelerate the commissioning of MPEX. Radio frequency (RF) source and heating models, plasma, neutral and impurity transport models, and plasma-material interaction (PMI) models are combined and coupled together to calculate the plasma and impurity fluxes from MPEX engineering parameters. These coupled models will first be validated on the existing Proto-MPEX experimental results before eventual extrapolation to MPEX. Initial results show the importance of core power absorption for helicon waves, parallel pressure gradients in predicting plasma flows, role of oxygen in predicting impurity transport, and importance of direct atomistic modeling in understanding ion penetration depth and reflection yields. Coupling all these models together appear necessary to predict source and heating, transport of main plasma, and transport of impurities in understanding the experimental measurements of plasma and impurity flux at the Proto-MPEX target.