Simulation on formation process of field-reversed configuration

Abstract

Abstract Collisional-merging is a way to form high-performance field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma. An experiment device named HUST-FRC (HFRC) is under construction in Huazhong University of Science and Technology, which will be used to investigate the FRC formation through collisionalmerging. In this research, a magnetohydrodynamics simulation software called USim is used to study the effect of the initial density of plasma, the amplitude of the bias magnetic field, the configuration of the bias field, the rise time of the main field and the magnetic field ripple on the plasma parameters to facilitate the design and operation of HFRC. Preliminary simulation results show that cusp configuration, lower ripple, higher initial density, an initial bias field of −0.15 T or −0.2 T, and a rise time of 4 μs are conducive to the formation of high-performance FRC plasma in the HFRC device.