Thermonuclear fusion is promising way to produce energy. The principle is to fuse two hydrogen nuclei o form a helium nucleus (releasing energy in the process) and a neutron. To achieve these fusion reactions on Earth, extremely high temperatures are required: more than 10 times the temperature of the Sun’s core. The energetic hydrogen ions contained in the reactor (called a tokamak) will eventually hit the reactor walls. Since hydrogen is the smallest element, it can penetrate and diffuse into the materials that made the reactor walls. Two different isotopes of hydrogen are fused in tokamaks: deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H). Since tritium is adioactive, its behaviour in fusion materials (and generally in tokamak components) must be assessed. Moreover, hydrogen can lead to material embrittlement which can reduce the components lifetime.

The objective of this placement is to use the simulation code FESTIM to predict hydrogen transport in materials at several scales, from lab experiments to tokamak components. The FESTIM code, relying on the inite element environment FEniCS and developed in Python, simulates the diffusion and trapping of hydrogen based on Fick’s law coupled with transient trapping and thermal field in solids in 1/2/3D and in omplex geometries. First, to familiarise with the code, thermo-desorption and NRA lab experiments will be eproduced in order to identify trap properties (energy and density) for several materials (Fe, Eurofer, Be). econdly, a specific work will be devoted to 2D and 3D meshing of ITER and DEMO plasma facing components ncluding multimaterial parts with the SALOME platform alongside with H transport and trapping simulations on these structures with parametric studies on thermal and particle fluxes. Third, numerical developments are planned to add surface growth model in FESTIM including the confrontation with the work of Krat et al. and application to Be/W and W/W co-deposited layers.

This project is meant for current Master's student as an internship or graduation project.

Duration: 4-6 months (March 2021 to July 2021) with allowance (≈570€/month)
 

For more information please send an email to
remi.delaporte-mathurin@lspm.cnrs.fr and jonathan.mougenot@lspm.cnrs.fr

To apply, please send us your CV and cover letter before 4th January 2021