| 1. |
-
- 2019
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)
|
|
| 2. |
- Zohm, H., et al.
(author)
-
Overview of ASDEX upgrade results in view of ITER and DEMO
- 2024
-
In: Nuclear Fusion. - 0029-5515 .- 1741-4326. ; 64:11
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Experiments on ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) in 2021 and 2022 have addressed a number of critical issues for ITER and EU DEMO. A major objective of the AUG programme is to shed light on the underlying physics of confinement, stability, and plasma exhaust in order to allow reliable extrapolation of results obtained on present day machines to these reactor-grade devices. Concerning pedestal physics, the mitigation of edge localised modes (ELMs) using resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) was found to be consistent with a reduction of the linear peeling-ballooning stability threshold due to the helical deformation of the plasma. Conversely, ELM suppression by RMPs is ascribed to an increased pedestal transport that keeps the plasma away from this boundary. Candidates for this increased transport are locally enhanced turbulence and a locked magnetic island in the pedestal. The enhanced D-alpha (EDA) and quasi-continuous exhaust (QCE) regimes have been established as promising ELM-free scenarios. Here, the pressure gradient at the foot of the H-mode pedestal is reduced by a quasi-coherent mode, consistent with violation of the high-n ballooning mode stability limit there. This is suggestive that the EDA and QCE regimes have a common underlying physics origin. In the area of transport physics, full radius models for both L- and H-modes have been developed. These models predict energy confinement in AUG better than the commonly used global scaling laws, representing a large step towards the goal of predictive capability. A new momentum transport analysis framework has been developed that provides access to the intrinsic torque in the plasma core. In the field of exhaust, the X-Point Radiator (XPR), a cold and dense plasma region on closed flux surfaces close to the X-point, was described by an analytical model that provides an understanding of its formation as well as its stability, i.e., the conditions under which it transitions into a deleterious MARFE with the potential to result in a disruptive termination. With the XPR close to the divertor target, a new detached divertor concept, the compact radiative divertor, was developed. Here, the exhaust power is radiated before reaching the target, allowing close proximity of the X-point to the target. No limitations by the shallow field line angle due to the large flux expansion were observed, and sufficient compression of neutral density was demonstrated. With respect to the pumping of non-recycling impurities, the divertor enrichment was found to mainly depend on the ionisation energy of the impurity under consideration. In the area of MHD physics, analysis of the hot plasma core motion in sawtooth crashes showed good agreement with nonlinear 2-fluid simulations. This indicates that the fast reconnection observed in these events is adequately described including the pressure gradient and the electron inertia in the parallel Ohm’s law. Concerning disruption physics, a shattered pellet injection system was installed in collaboration with the ITER International Organisation. Thanks to the ability to vary the shard size distribution independently of the injection velocity, as well as its impurity admixture, it was possible to tailor the current quench rate, which is an important requirement for future large devices such as ITER. Progress was also made modelling the force reduction of VDEs induced by massive gas injection on AUG. The H-mode density limit was characterised in terms of safe operational space with a newly developed active feedback control method that allowed the stability boundary to be probed several times within a single discharge without inducing a disruptive termination. Regarding integrated operation scenarios, the role of density peaking in the confinement of the ITER baseline scenario (high plasma current) was clarified. The usual energy confinement scaling ITER98(p,y) does not capture this effect, but the more recent H20 scaling does, highlighting again the importance of developing adequate physics based models. Advanced tokamak scenarios, aiming at large non-inductive current fraction due to non-standard profiles of the safety factor in combination with high normalised plasma pressure were studied with a focus on their access conditions. A method to guide the approach of the targeted safety factor profiles was developed, and the conditions for achieving good confinement were clarified. Based on this, two types of advanced scenarios (‘hybrid’ and ‘elevated’ q-profile) were established on AUG and characterised concerning their plasma performance.
|
|
| 3. |
- Maier, O., et al.
(author)
-
ISLES 2015-A public evaluation benchmark for ischemic stroke lesion segmentation from multispectral MRI
- 2017
-
In: Medical Image Analysis. - : Elsevier BV. - 1361-8415 .- 1361-8423. ; 35, s. 250-269
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Ischemic stroke is the most common cerebrovascular disease, and its diagnosis, treatment, and study relies on non-invasive imaging. Algorithms for stroke lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes are intensely researched, but the reported results are largely incomparable due to different datasets and evaluation schemes. We approached this urgent problem of comparability with the Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2015 conference. In this paper we propose a common evaluation framework, describe the publicly available datasets, and present the results of the two sub-challenges: Sub-Acute Stroke Lesion Segmentation (SISS) and Stroke Perfusion Estimation (SPES). A total of 16 research groups participated with a wide range of state-of-the-art automatic segmentation algorithms. A thorough analysis of the obtained data enables a critical evaluation of the current state-of-the-art, recommendations for further developments, and the identification of remaining challenges. The segmentation of acute perfusion lesions addressed in SPES was found to be feasible. However, algorithms applied to sub-acute lesion segmentation in SISS still lack accuracy. Overall, no algorithmic characteristic of any method was found to perform superior to the others. Instead, the characteristics of stroke lesion appearances, their evolution, and the observed challenges should be studied in detail. The annotated ISLES image datasets continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system to serve as an ongoing benchmarking resource (www.isles-challenge.org).
|
|
| 4. |
- Cibiraite, D., et al.
(author)
-
Thermal noise-limited sensitivity of FET-based terahertz detectors
- 2017
-
In: 2017 International Conference on Noise and Fluctuations, ICNF 2017, Vilnius, Lithuania, 20-23 June 2017.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Here we present a detailed study on estimation of noise-dependent parameters, such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or noise equivalent power (NEP), of field-effect-transistor based terahertz detectors (TeraFETs). Commonly, these parameters are estimated from a well-known assumption, that detector's performance is limited by the thermal noise of transistor's channel. However, practice shows that the influence of other noise sources or transient effects is considerable. We summarize TeraFET noise measurements performed on different material systems based transistors, such as AlGaN/GaN, AlGaAs/GaAs, silicon CMOS, and monolayer graphene. We have achieved a good agreement between thermal noise and measured data. However, attention has to be paid to gate leakage currents and slow defect charging and discharging effects, which can strongly influence TeraFET's performance estimation.
|
|
| 5. |
- Muñoz-Fernández, J. C., et al.
(author)
-
Capturing ambiguity in artifacts to support requirements engineering for self-adaptive systems
- 2017
-
In: CEUR Workshop Proceedings. - 1613-0073. ; 1796
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Self-adaptive systems (SAS) automatically adjust their behavior at runtime in order to manage changes in their user requirements and operating context. To achieve this goal, a SAS needs to carry knowledge in artifacts (e.g., contextual goal models) at runtime. However, identifying, representing, and refining requirements and their context to create and maintain such artifacts at runtime is a challenging task, especially if the runtime environment is not very well known. In this short paper, we present an early concept to requirements engineering for the implementation of SAS in the context of uncertainty. Especially the wide variety of knowledge materialized in artifacts created during software engineering activities at design time is considered. We propose to start with a list of ambiguous requirements - or under-specified requirements -, leaving the ambiguity in the requirements, which will in the later steps be resolved further as more information is known. In contrast to conventional requirements engineering approaches, not all ambiguous requirements will be resolved. Instead, ambiguities serve as key input for self-adaptation. We present five steps for the resolution of the ambiguity. For each step, we describe its purpose, identified challenges, and resolution ideas. Copyright © 2017 for this paper by its authors.
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
