Integrated Thermomechanical Model of First Wall Components Under Evolving Chemistry and Microstructure During Fusion Reactor Operation

Project Summary

The objective of this project is to develop an integrated computational model linking the materials physics scale with the component-level scale to simulate the thermomechanical response of the full first wall/blanket structures during fusion reactor operation. Phenomena of interest at the three modeling scales include:

1. Fundamental properties (“Level 1”)
   1. Transmutant inventory changes
   2. Dose- and material chemistry-dependent PKA energy distributions
   3. Displacement cascades in isotopically-changing environments
   4. Chemical environment-dependent defect structures
   5. Irradiation defect distributions
   6. Tritium transport/trapping in chemically evolving environments
2. Microstructural evolution (“Level 2”)
   1. Irradiation hardening, creep, and swelling
   2. Grain growth/recrystallization
   3. Tritium permeation and retention
3. Component evaluation (“Level 3”)
   1. Integrated thermomechanical evolution of selected design(s)
   2. Design findings/recommendations

We will also carry out assessments of the uncertainties associated with various phenomena to inform the integrated models.

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Publications and Presentations

We’re just getting started. We’ll add papers and publications once we start producing them.

But if you’re looking for more information about our plans, here is a public version of our original proposal. Note that this version does not include scope changes in response to budget changes at award time.

Team

Institution	Principal Investigator(s)*	Additional Personnel
	Jaime Marian (FES, Lead PI)	Abhijeet Gangan, Alan He, Shao-Ching Huang, Scarlett Liang, Lily Wang
	Cody Permann (ASCR) Benjamin Spencer (FES)	Peter German, Dewen Yushu
	David E. Bernholdt (ASCR) Paul Humrickhouse (FES)	Sergey Yakubov
	Wahyu Setyawan (FES)	Yucheng Fu
	Mary Alice Cusentino (FES) Khachik Sargsyan (ASCR)
	Jason Trelewicz (FES)	Yusheng Jin, Anus Manzoor, Spencer Thomas
	Giacomo Po (FES)	Abdulmohssen Abaalkhail, Harsh Dudhatra
	Izabela Szlufarska (FES)	Dane Morgan, Rafi Ullah
	David Cereceda (FES)

* PIs are listed for the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) funding components, as appropriate. The first person listed is the institutional PI.

Sponsor

This project is part of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, and is jointly sponsored by the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) programs within the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The project is part of the fifth funding cycle of the SciDAC program, under FOA DE-FOA-0002924. The project’s period of performance is 2023-09-22/2027-09-21.