Nuclear Engineering ETDs

Publication Date

7-12-2014

Abstract

In inertial confinement fusion (ICF), the kinetic ion and charge separation field effects may play a significant role in the difference between the measured neutron yield in experiments and the predicted yield from fluid codes. Two distinct of approaches exists in modeling plasma physics phenomena: fluid and kinetic approaches. While the fluid approach is computationally less expensive, robust closures are difficult to obtain for a wide separation in temperature and density. While the kinetic approach is a closed system, it resolves the full 6D phase space and classic explicit numerical schemes restrict both the spatial and time-step size to a point where the method becomes intractable. Classic implicit system require the storage and inversion of a very large linear system which also becomes intractable. This dissertation will develop a new implicit method based on an emerging moment-based accelerator which allows one to step over stiff kinetic time-scales. The new method converges the solution per time-step stably and efficiently compared to a standard Picard iteration. This new algorithm will be used to investigate mixing in Omega ICF fuel-pusher interface at early time of the implosion process, fully kinetically.

Keywords

moment based accelerator, plasma physics, inertial confinement fusion, mix, kinetic, HOLO

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Nuclear Engineering

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Nuclear Engineering

First Committee Member (Chair)

Knoll, Dana

Second Committee Member

Oliveira, Cassiano

Third Committee Member

Sulsky, Deborah

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