The behaviour of magnetic field lines and drifts in 3D configurations

The magnetic topology and the particles drift orbits in 3D configurations are analyzed with numerical tools developed during this thesis (the MFLT3D code and the VENUS code) or with existing codes (the VMEC code and the TERPSICHORE code). We will focus our study on the effect of a magnetic perturbation in a MHD equilibrium and on the neoclassical transport in new 3D reactor designs. Firstly, the magnetic structure and particle drift orbits are studied in a monotonic q-profile and in a reversed shear TEXTOR equilibrium that is subject to a magnetic perturbation driven by the Dynamic Ergodic Divertor (DED). The main results prove that there exists a transport barrier for the magnetic field lines and for circulating particles in the reversed shear case when the DED is applied. This transport barrier occurs near the surface of minimum q-value where the KAM theory may be invalid. Moreover, we have remarked that trapped particles are lost due to the presence of the ripple and the DED does not affect their trajectories. Then, we have observed that a magnetic perturbation produced by saddle coils, for example, can control internal instabilities like tearing modes in the JET tokamak. We have shown that depending on the n mode number, the saddle coils have beneficial effects on the island width of internal instabilities. Finally, the study of neoclassical transport and Q-particles confinement are analyzed in 3D reactor designs like the QAS3, the ST/sphellamak hybrid and the sphellamak. We have observed that neither the QAS3 nor the ST/sphellamak are quasiaxisymmetric configurations. Thus the transport process is governed by the helical deformation of the magnetic field strength and these configurations do not confine the trapped Q-particles. On the other hand, the sphellamak is a nearly isodynamic structure in the plasma core which leads to good Q-particle confinement and the neoclassical transport is very similar to that obtained in a 2D equivalent tokamak. (author)