The MEMENTO code for modelling of macroscopic melt motion in fusion devices

TL;DR

The paper introduces MEMENTO, a new numerical code that models melt dynamics and damage in fusion device materials, validated through experiments and capable of simulating complex melt behavior under plasma events.

Contribution

MEMENTO is a novel, validated numerical tool that self-consistently models melt generation and dynamics in fusion reactors using advanced adaptive meshing and parallelization.

Findings

Successfully validated against EUROfusion experiments.

Capable of simulating large-scale melt motion and damage.

Uses adaptive meshing for efficient computation.

Abstract

The MEMENTO (MEtallic Melt Evolution in Next-step TOkamaks) code is a new numerical implementation of the physics model originally developed for the MEMOS-U code with the objective to self-consistently describe the generation of melt and its subsequent large scale dynamics in fusion devices and to assess the damage of metallic reactor armor under powerful normal and off-normal plasma events. The model has been validated in multiple dedicated EUROfusion experiments. MEMENTO solves the heat and phase transfer problem coupled with the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the shallow water approximation for the thin liquid film over the solid metal and with the current propagation equations on a domain that features a time-evolving deforming metal-plasma interface. The code utilizes non-uniform and adaptive meshing along with sub-cycling in time facilitated by the AMReX open-source framework as well as AMReX's built-in parallelization capabilities.