Steps towards 3D Integrated System Model of Magnetized Target Fusion at General Fusion

The Integrated System Model (ISM) project carried out at General Fusion (GF) aims at performing comprehensive predictive simulations of magnetized target fusion (MTF) systems, where a rotating liquid metal liner compresses a spherical tokamak plasma to fusion conditions. The role of the ISM is to guide the current design of the Fusion Demonstration Plant (FDP) and the future design of an MTF reactor. The ISM hydrodynamics code predicts the compression trajectory of the rotating liquid metal liner depending on applied pressure pulses and geometrical constraints. Currently the code solves the reduced form of the Navier-Stokes equation for a compressible fluid in either (r,z)-plane axisymmetric setting or (r,θ)-plane non-axisymmetric setting, where (r,θ,z) are the cylindrical coordinates. The code uses a mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, where a numerical mesh follows the fluid elements only in the r direction and is fixed in θ and z directions. The code is coupled with a self-consistent model of driving system, which produces the pressure pulses for liner compression. The main advantage of the code is its speed: a simple case takes several minutes of wall-clock time, allowing for fast optimization of the FDP design. Verification of simulations against other codes and comparison with ongoing GF compression experiments will be presented.