Design of a stabilizing shell for KTX

The conductive shell in reversed field pinch devices plays an important role in controlling plasma and in suppressing MHD instabilities. The shell in the Keda torus experiment reversed field pinch (KTX-RFP) device includes a 6-mm stainless steel vacuum chamber and a 1.5-mm stabilizing copper shell. This stabilizing shell has both poloidal and toroidal gaps to allow a coupling of electromagnetic energy to the plasma. Nevertheless, any gaps in this shell generate error fields. A 3D electromagnetic field model has been used to study effects of the gap on the shell. Using off-center current filaments instead of the distributed plasma current density, numerical analyses render the induced current distribution on the stabilizing shell and the resultant error field distribution at a specific frequency. From the analyses and comparisons of different configurations for the stabilizing shell, a suitable shell design is chosen consisting of three sections: one primary shell, two poloidal shield shells, and two toroidal shield shells. Moreover, the time evolution of the magnetic field inside and outside the stabilizing shell was obtained for this design and the dependence of the magnetic field penetration time on mode number and location has been investigated.