Welcome to the Integrated Tokamak Modeling Task Force (ITM-TF)
The ITM-TF Mission
The main mission of ITM-TF is to build a validated suite of simulation codes for ITER plasmas and to provide a software infrastructure framework for EU integrated modelling activities. In the short-term, the ITM-TF operates under a work plan aiming to offer a full simulation environment incorporating core-edge coupling and first-principles elements. The current work programme was formulated to support this goal, structuring the EU modelling effort around existing experiments and ITER scenario prediction while maintaining a long term strategic aim to provide a validated set of European modelling tools for ITER exploitation.last update: 2011-04-19 by coster
The European Integrated Modelling approach
The choice of Integrated Modelling made by the ITM-TF is unique and original: it entails the development of a comprehensive and completely generic tokamak simulator including both the physics and the machine which can be applied for any fusion device. The simulation platform is designed to be fully modular, flexible, and independent of a programming language. The choice of modularity implies that each module contains a single physical model and that the communication between the modules is standardised: a set of common rules (ontology) clearly specify the format of the data to be consistently exchanged between modules (data-structure). The complexity of coupling the codes together is therefore transferred to the definition of a generic data-structure (allowing to describe and exchange information concerning both physical quantities and technical objects, not assuming the origin of those), extensible to allow the integration of new physics, as well as more elaborate machine geometries and experimental data in the future. A central ITM-TF project is the development of the so-called European Transport Solver (ETS). aimed to meet all the ITM requirements, namely modularity, flexibility and standardized interfaces. In terms of the physics, the ETS is designed to solve the standard set of one-dimensional time dependent equations which describe the evolution of the core plasma. The solver itself is designed with a modular approach enabling the separation of the physics from the numerics, thereby facilitating the testing/usage of the numerical schemes that best suit a particular physical simulation.last update: 2011-04-19 by coster
ITM-TF Structure
ITM-TF is structured into four Integrated Modelling Projects (IMPs) focusing on the following physics areas:- IMP12 plasma equilibrium and MHD
- IMP3 transport code and whole discharge evolution
- IMP4 transport and micro-instabilities
- IMP5 heating, current drive (H&CD) and fast particles
Two further projects ensure the link with the experimentalists and the provision of the experimental databases:
- AMNS the "Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear Surface" Data
- EDRG "Experimentalists and Diagnosticians Resource Group"
The "ITER Scenario Modelling Working Group" (ISM) was established in 2007 as part of ITM-TF with the aim to assist in systematic predictive modelling of all ITER reference scenarios by using the major existing integrated modelling tools, whilst the ITM code platform was in development. ISM is also supporting the verification and validation of the ETS, which aims to become the main tool for EU modelling activity.
last update: 2011-04-20 by coster
ITM-TF Achievements
During the first phase of the ITM-TF, surveys and cross-verification of the available European models and numerical codes were performed within the individual IMPs and the data-structure was extensively discussed and defined. Equilibrium, linear MHD stability, core transport and RF wave propagation, as well as the poloidal field systems and a few diagnostics were the first topics addressed. Data structures have been finalised for these and are being expanded to address, among others, non-linear MHD, edge physics, turbulence and neutral beam propagation. In parallel to the development of the physics concepts, ITM-TF has developed the tools to manipulate the data structure and use it in fully flexible and modular simulation workflows. The ITM-TF has now achieved the development of the first release version of a fully modular and versatile simulator with all the essential functionalities, which is ready to be used for the first physics applications. In 2010 the validation of the tools start: ITM database contains machine descriptions from JET, Tore Supra, MAST, FTU, FAST and AUG as well as some experimental data from Tore Supra and JET, modules from the different IMPs are available and are being integrated in the transport solver. The following years will see the validation of the simulator for a complete discharge on existing experimental data with the available modules, the integration of more quantitative physics models ("ab-initio") and the integration of the whole modelling of the device.
Some posters that describe the ITM were presented at an ITM EXPO at the 2011 EPS fusion conference in Strasbourg. Copies can be found here.
last update: 2011-07-02 by coster