Vibrating solid matter confinement
Posted: 05 September 2011 04:55 PM   [ Ignore ]
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Just an idea, probably no feasible, but might be useful for Tokamak-like confinement, in addition to or instead of magnetic confinement:
What if the wall would vibrate in order to try to reduce the heat transfer from plasma and push the plasma further apart.
I wonder what would a model show, whether mechanical properties are realistic or there is no benefit in this effect.

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Posted: 06 September 2011 09:30 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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The timescales of turbulence and cooling etc in plasma is measured in microseconds. Also these devices are huge. So there is no way this is feasible as you can’t move that much mass far enough to matter. Perhaps “vibrating” magnetic fields, or active feedback. Some work is being done with that now.

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Posted: 08 September 2011 11:39 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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I don’t quite get it how a vibrating wall could help and I’m also not a mechanical engineer, but I guess they wouldn’t like the idea or maybe some would - as a challenge smile
Just to give you some figures since they are readily available from my desktop background:
The total ITER machine mass (cryostat +vacuum vessel + magnets) is 23350 t.
Shielding , divertor and manifolds (the wall) are 7945 t.

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Posted: 08 September 2011 03:12 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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i think the essential point is, that if the plasma touches the chamber wall, that’s bad. so maybe the vibrations would make it bounce?

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Posted: 08 September 2011 03:40 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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No it wouldn’t. It would just cool and perhaps sputter some contaminants into the plasma, since they are moving so fast compared to any physically plausible vibration. From the plasmas point of view, the wall is stationary.

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Posted: 04 April 2012 04:03 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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Think fast processors brain and what we are willing to give up.  I am 1 degree cooler than the average human being and have spent most of my life vibrating at 10 times my normal heart rate….

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