Fluid simulation on pellet ablation with atomic process

A new type of a hydrodynamic code applicable to solid, liquid and gas states, ‘CAP’ has been developed in order to investigate an ablation process of pellets in hot plasmas under various atomic process (dissociation and ionization) and heat fluxes. One of the most important features of the code is to be able to treat recession of the pellet surface by ablation without any artificial boundary condition between the pellet and ablation cloud. It is clearly known that a stationary shock wave is induced by ionization, and that the Maxwellian heat flux more enhances ablation than a conventional mono-energetic heat flux. Nonuniform of the ablation pressure induced by nonuniform heating along B-field leads to a deformation of the pellet, so that the pellet lifetime is found to be shorter than one predicted by an ablation model.