Modeling the forces produced by plasma disruptions on the Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT) vacuum vessel

Plasma disruption within the Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT) can produce large eddy currents that in turn interact with the existing magnetic fields to produce significant mechanical loads. In order to make the analysis of the disruption forces on the CIT vacuum vessel as consistent as possible, a technique was developed in which the Tokamak Simulation Code (TSC) and the SPARK 3-D eddy current code were used in series. A plasma disruption was initially modeled using TSC. The TSC model consists off a distributed system of axisymmetric elements including the vacuum vessel, the plasma, the poloidal coils, and the toroidal-field-coil support structure. TSC solves the dynamic interaction of the entire system in a self-consistent manner. All the resulting TSC currents except for the vacuum vessel elements were then used as drivers for the SPARK eddy current code