Simulations of combined neutral beam injection and ion cyclotron heating with the TORIC-SSFPQL package

A source describing the injection of fast ions due to the ionization of high-energy neutral beams has been added to the surface-averaged quasilinear Fokker–Planck code SSFPQL (Brambilla 1994 Nucl. Fusion 34 1121 ). For this purpose, the multiple-beam NBI code SINBAD (Feng et al 1995 Comput. Phys. Commun. 88 161) has been included as a module in SSFPQL, with the modifications required to handle arbitrary axisymmetric equilibria. Alternatively, the neutral beam injection (NBI) source can be built using the output of a Monte Carlo NBI code. We have also added a term describing losses of fast ions during thermalization, and a subroutine evaluating the neutron production rate by nuclear reactions. With these extensions, iterations between SSFPQL and the full-wave solver TORIC (Brambilla 1999 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 41 1 ) can now be used to investigate the strong interplay between NBI and ion cyclotron (IC) heating. By comparing the predicted and measured neutron production rates from D–D reactions in a discharge with combined NBI and IC heating in ASDEX Upgrade we obtain a plausible estimate of the importance of fast-ion losses (FILs), even if their cause cannot be identified. We find, however, that the plasma composition, in particular the presence of low Z impurities, plays a more critical role than FILs in limiting the efficiency of this heating scheme.