Joseph McClenaghan

Dr. McClenaghan research interests include modeling plasmas and computational plasma physics. He has experience in integrated modeling, transport modeling, gyrokinetic simulations. While performing plasma physics simulations, he implemented a model for pellet fueling and coupled it transport codes to investigate the density fueling needs of various future devices. Using impurity-modified single-fluid nonlinear 3D resistive MHD, he investigated shattered pellet injection of the JET tokamak showing that the radiation peaking is similar to experimental observations.He also showed that there is an exerimental bifurcation in transport due to the Shafranov shift in the DIII-D high $\beta_p$ scenario. As a Postdoctoral researcher, He extrapolated the DIII-D high poloidal beta scenario to future devices such as ITER steady-state and FNSF using GA Systems Code. He used TGYRO transport code to investigate how a negative central shear can improve confinement in a high bootstrap fraction ITER steady-state. He has also integrated various codes into OMFIT, including: Alfven continuum code ALCON, systems study code GASC, a module for the plasma sources, and a critical ECH cutoff density scanner for TORBEAM and TORAY. As a graduate student at UC Irvine, under the advisement of Zhihong Lin, the focus of his research was using the gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code GTC to simulate kinetic-MHD modes. He extended the GTC code capabilities to the magnetic axis in order to perform internal kink mode simulations. He also was involved in a collaboration involving various plasma codes to predict how toroidal Alfven eigenmodes will behave in ITER.