David Ryan

University Of York

I am studying for a PhD working on a collaborative project between the University of York and the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), supervised by Dr Yueqiang Liu at the CCFE and Dr Ben Dudson at York.

In large next generation tokamaks (ITER and beyond), short energetic plasma bursts called Edge Localised Modes (ELMs), are expected to cause heat loads high enough to melt machine components; a problem which has yet to be solved. Recent results have shown that the application of Resonant Magnetic Perturbation (RMP) fields can control or even eliminate ELMs in current tokamaks. However, the plasma has a complex response to the RMP field, and a more thorough understanding is urgently needed.

The project involves using numerical models to compute the plasma response to applied RMPs, in order to expand our understanding of how RMPs may interact with ELMs in tokamak plasmas. The numerical predictions can be compared with experimental measurements of the plasma response and ELM effects, and then more accurate predictions for planned RMP systems on future tokamaks such as ITER, can be made.