A Personal-Computer-Based Package for Interactive Assessment of Magnetohydrodynamic Equilibrium and Poloidal Field Coil Design in Axisymmetric Toroidal Geometry

A personal-computer (PC)-based calculational approach assesses magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium and poloidal field (PF) coil arrangement in a highly interactive mode, well suited for tokamak scoping studies. The system developed involves a two-step process: First the MHD equilibrium is calculated and then a PF coil arrangement, consistent with the equilibrium, is determined in an interactive design environment. The approach is used to examine four distinctly different toroidal configurations: the STARFIRE reactor, a spherical torus (ST), the Big Dee, and an elongated tokamak. In these applications the PC-based results are benchmarked against those of a mainframe code for STARFIRE, ST, and Big Dee. The equilibrium and PF coil arrangement calculations obtained with the PC approach agree within a few percent with those obtained with the mainframe code. The applications and benchmarks demonstrate both the flexibility and the accuracy of the PC-based system, making it an ideal tool for scoping studies.