Multichannel Radial Transport Simulation of a Rapidly-Rotating Axisymmetric Plasma

The Maryland Transport Solver (MTS) is a one-dimensional numerical framework with the goal of providing a predictive scoping and design tool for the Centrifugal Mirror Fusion Experiment (CMFX). MTS solves the simplified transport equations of a centrifugally confined, rapidly-rotating plasma in a magnetic mirror from first principles. This framework is an iteration of MCTrans++ [Schwartz, N., et al, 2022, this conference], a zero-dimensional model designed for the same problem. MTS utilizes a one-dimensional, radial, finite-element, Hybridized Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) model [Nguyen, N.C., Peraire, J. and Cockburn, B., 2009. Journal of Computational Physics, 228(9), pp.3232-3254 and 228(23), pp.8841-8855.] combined with MCTrans++ to solve for multichannel particle, momentum, and heat transport. The coupling of the transport of such thermodynamic quantities allows the co-dependent nature of their fluxes to be investigated. The SUNDIALS IDA package provides a multi-step implicit backward differentiation formula (BDF) to model the time integration of the equations. Additionally, the plug-and-play nature of the input flux equations allows for the generalization of the numerical framework to any axisymmetric plasma. Thus showing potential for optimization and adjoint method studies for multiple fusion reactor designs.