EFDA-JET-R(11)01

Report of the ITPA MHD Working Group 6 on Non-Axisymmetric Currents During VDEs

During VDEs toroidally asymmetric vessel currents can flow and these are related to toroidal variations in the measured toroidal plasma current. These asymmetries in the currents during VDEs can lead to substantial sideways forces of over 4MN in JET, and are expected to be an order of magnitude larger in ITER. There is thus an urgent need to develop and record understanding of plasma current asymmetries during VDEs; to facilitate this process a Working Group (WG 6) on sideways forces on the vacuum vessel and magnets was established under the auspices of the ITPA MHD Topical Group. This report discusses the asymmetries of plasma and vessel currents measured in JET and as such is an update of previous reports. It also discusses related measurements of halo current asymmetries in ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) and DIII-D. For ITER the asymmetric forces are being modelled using the source and sink model described in Ref [1]. The plasma current asymmetries are assumed to have an n=1 toroidal variation and so the input needed is the amplitude of the plasma current asymmetry, its duration and its rotational frequency (if any). More specifically information is needed on the amplitude/duration of asymmetry for the worst 6% of asymmetric VDEs (termed Cat III/IV) and for the least bad 94% (termed Cat II). The asymmetry rotation is also an issue; in ITER the main vessel resonant frequencies are in the range 3-8Hz and so if the current asymmetries were to rotate in this range of frequency there will be an enhancement of the vessel distortions. Also smaller in-vessel components have higher resonant frequencies of up to ~100Hz. A previous assessment by the ITER of JET data concluded that the Cat III/IV plasma current asymmetries can be covered by an envelope of 10% of the pre-disruptive Ip lasting for 37.5ms (in JET). This assessment was based however on just 7 pulses with incomplete data on the toroidal variation ­ hence the importance of revisiting this issue with a larger and more complete dataset.
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