Development of an HPC platform for Plasma-Material Interactions and Nanostrcturing

Davide Curreli, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Usage Details

In the edge region of magnetically-confined plasmas the interaction of plasmas and material surfaces poses significant challenges to the survivability of plasma-facing components, currently limiting the successful development of  commercially-viable nuclear fusion reactors. Taming the Plasma-Material Interface is now one of the top priorities of required fusion science research to get to a demonstration fusion power plant. When exposed to plasma irradiation, plasma-facing materials exhibit evidence of surface morphology modifications and nano-structuring, with detrimental consequences on the thermomechanical integrity of the wall. In the present project we will develop and test the scalability on Blue Waters of the hPIC code (HPC platform for Plasma-Material Interactions and Nanostructuring), which is the first HPC modeling platform for kinetic analysis of Plasma-Material Interactions.