Numerical simulation on edge localized mode control capability of resonant magnetic perturbation in the KSTAR tokamak

Abstract

Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the applicability of resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) to KSTAR plasmas for a possible control of edge localized mode (ELM) to suppress or mitigate its damages to divertor materials. For the verification of the feasibility of RMP application, magnetic island configurations, resonant normal fields, magnetic island widths and Chirikov parameters are calculated for two types of KSTAR operation scenarios: steady state and hybrid. Field error correction (FEC) coils in KSTAR are considered to produce externally perturbed magnetic fields for RMP, and the directions of coil currents determine the toroidal mode n and the parity (even or odd). The RMP configurations are described by vacuum superposition of the equilibrium magnetic fields and the perturbed ones induced by FEC coils. The numerical simulations for n = 2 toroidal mode in both operation scenarios show that when the pitches of the equilibrium and perturbed magnetic fields are well aligned, magnetic islands are formed for a series of m poloidal modes and the adjacent islands are overlapped to generate a stochastic layer in the edge region. Even parity turns out to be more effective in making the magnetic islands overlapped to become stochastic field lines in the steady-state operation, while odd parity in the hybrid operation. The formation of the stochastic layer is verified by the calculated Chirikov parameters, which also give basic information on the current requirement of FEC coils. Additionally, lobe structures of stochastic field lines are found in the edge region extended to the divertor plate in the hybrid scenario. Based on the standard vacuum criteria for RMP, the simulation results indicate that the FEC coils will be feasible for control of ELMs and mitigation of divertor heat load by RMP in both steady-state and hybrid operation scenarios.