Plasma Theory and Modelling Group
plasmas, fluids — complex physical systems
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory of plasmas
Complex physical systems exhibit emergent behaviours that depend only weakly
on the details of the microscopic interactions — the art of complex
systems modelling lies in choosing a coarse-grained description appropriate
to the scale of the phenomena of interest. The charged particles in a highly
ionized hot plasma interact primarily collectively and thus fluid descriptions
are appropriate, the simplest being magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). This combines
the Navier-Stokes equations and a simplified set of Maxwell equations.
The simplicity of the MHD description is deceptive, especially in strongly
non-axisymmetric systems such as the H-1NF helical axis stellarator
(heliac) at ANU, shown below, and larger stellarators in Japan, Europe
and the US. The existence of MHD equilibria and the nature of the spectrum
of normal modes are challenging topics that our Group is making ground-breaking
contributions to.
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For information on current work see Fusion Modelling
menu items at <left.
[Some information on earlier ANU work can be found in the overview
talk on MHD modelling of H-1NF at the International Conference
on Numerical Simulation of Plasmas, Banff 2000: slides, ICNSP2000.pdf
(5.8 MB; 4-page paper, Dewar_Banff.pdf
(0.8MB)] |
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