Speaker
Description
The development of inertial fusion energy (IFE) reactors requires chambers that can withstand extreme cyclic loads, making multiphysics coupling a critical element of digital engineering for predicting integrity and safety. At EX-Fusion, we are developing a demonstration chamber—our “triple-one-ten” project—designed for 10 Hz operation with 1–10 kJ laser shots on deuterium pellets for up to one hour. This platform, which builds upon our prior milestone of the first 10 Hz target engagement with metallic mock targets, requires predictive modelling of neutron transport, thermal-mechanical stresses, fluid dynamics, and tritium transport under pulsed irradiation.
To address this, we have developed a modelling and simulation (mod-sim) workflow integrating PHITS for particle transport, nuclear heating, and dose mapping; Ansys for CFD-driven structural fatigue and failure analysis; and, in future iterations, FESTIM for tritium retention and diffusion. Our goal is to have fields such as temperature, heat flux, and advection be passed iteratively between codes, enabling dynamic time-dependent coupling. We have successfully demonstrated coupled CFD-mechanical simulations of our chamber system and would like to extend this framework toward full multiphysics integration, including tritium transport and plasma-wall interactions.
Our workflow is designed to evolve in lock-step with our reactor roadmap: starting with simplified models for low-flux DD operation (10⁴–10⁵ n/shot), scaling to higher-flux regimes (10¹¹–10¹³ n/shot), and eventually incorporating liquid-metal wall, blanket, and fuel-cycle systems modelling in later reactor phases with neutron fluxes exceeding 1016 n/shot. Our approach emphasizes fast iteration and adaptive workflow refinement informed by experimental results.
By presenting our workflow in this workshop, we aim to contribute to the broader fusion community’s efforts in digital engineering, supporting the development of coupled simulations for IFE reactors. This work directly addresses the workshop’s focus areas of simulation and modelling techniques, data integration, and workflow configuration management, and provides a case study of how agile, multiphysics-driven design can accelerate reactor R&D.
| Country or International Organisation | United States of America |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | EX-Fusion Inc. |
| Speaker's email address | max_monange@ex-fusion.com |
