In magnetically confined plasma research, the understandings of small and large perturbations at equilibrium are both critical for plasma controlling and steady state operation. Numerical simulations using original MHD model can hardly give clear picture for small perturbations, while non-conservative perturbed MHD model may break conservation law, and give unphysical results when perturbations grow large after long-time computation. In this paper, we present a nonlinear conservative perturbed MHD model by splitting primary variables in original MHD equations into equilibrium part and perturbed part, and apply an approach in the framework of discontinuous Galerkin (DG) spatial discretization for numerical solutions. This enables high resolution of very small perturbations, and also gives satisfactory non-smooth solutions for large perturbations, which are both broadly concerned in magnetically confined plasma research. Numerical examples demonstrate satisfactory performance of the proposed model clearly. For small perturbations, the results have higher resolution comparing with the original MHD model; for large perturbations, the non-smooth solutions match well with existing references, confirming reliability of the model for instability investigations in magnetically confined plasma numerical research.

In this paper, we introduce a high-order accurate constrained transport type finite volume method to solve ideal magnetohydrodynamic equations on two-dimensional triangular meshes. A new divergence-free WENO-based reconstruction method is developed to maintain exactly divergence-free evolution of the numerical magnetic field. In this formulation, the normal component of the magnetic field at each face of a triangle is reconstructed uniquely and with the desired order of accuracy. Additionally, a new weighted flux interpolation approach is also developed to compute the z-component of the electric field at vertices of grid cells. We also present numerical examples to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed scheme.

We present a new numerical method to approximate the solutions of an Euler-Poisson model, which is inherent to astrophysical flows where gravity plays an important role. We propose a discretization of gravity which ensures adequate coupling of the Poisson and Euler equations, paying particular attention to the gravity source term involved in the latter equations. In order to approximate this source term, its discretization is introduced into the approximate Riemann solver used for the Euler equations. A relaxation scheme is involved and its robustness is established. The method has been implemented in the software HERACLES [29] and several numerical experiments involving gravitational flows for astrophysics highlight the scheme.

In this report, a charge preserving numerical resolution of the 1D Vlasov-Ampère equation is achieved, with a forward Semi-Lagrangian method introduced in [10]. The Vlasov equation belongs to the kinetic way of simulating plasmas evolution, and is coupled with the Poisson’s equation, or equivalently under charge conservation, the Ampère’s one, which self-consistently rules the electric field evolution. In order to ensure having proper physical solutions, it is necessary that the scheme preserves charge numerically. B-spline deposition will be used for the interpolation step. The solving of the characteristics will be made with a Runge-Kutta 2 method and with a Cauchy-Kovalevsky procedure.