Computation of stationary 3D halo currents in fusion devices with accuracy control

This paper addresses the calculation of the resistive distribution of halo currents in three-dimensional structures of large magnetic confinement fusion machines. A Neumann electrokinetic problem is solved on a geometry so complicated that complementarily is used to monitor the discretization error. An irrotational electric field is obtained by a geometric formulation based on the electric scalar potential, whereas three geometric formulations are compared to obtain a solenoidal current density: a formulation based on the electric vector potential and two geometric formulations inspired from mixed and mixed-hybrid Finite Elements. The electric vector potential formulation is usually considered impractical since an enormous computing power is wasted by the topological pre-processing it requires. To solve this challenging problem, we present novel algorithms based on lazy cohomology generators that enable to save orders of magnitude computational time with respect to all other state-of-the-art solutions proposed in literature. Believing that our results are useful in other fields of scientific computing, the proposed algorithm is presented as a detailed pseudocode in such a way that it can be easily implemented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.