Abstract
This paper introduces STRIPE (Simulated Transport of RF Impurity Production and Emission), an advanced modeling framework designed to analyze material erosion and transport of these sputtered impurity at radio-frequency (RF) antenna structures in magnetic confinement fusion devices. STRIPE integrates multiple computational tools, each addressing different levels of physics fidelity: SolEdge3x provides scrape-off layer (SOL) plasma profiles, COMSOL models 3D RF rectified voltage fields on antenna structures, GITR calculates ion energy-angle distributions (IEADs) and particle tracking, and RustBCA determines material erosion yields and surface interaction dynamics. The framework is applied to an ion cyclotron radio-frequency heating (ICRH), L-mode discharge #57877 in the WEST Tokamak, where it predicts a tenfold increase in tungsten erosion at RF antenna limiters under RF-sheath rectification conditions, compared to cases with only a thermal sheath. Highly charged oxygen ions (O6+ and higher) emerge as dominant contributors to tungsten sputtering at the antenna limiters. To verify model accuracy, a synthetic diagnostic tool based on S/XB coefficients from the ColRadPy- collisional radiative model enables direct comparisons between simulation results and experimental spectroscopic data. Model predictions, assuming plasma composition of 1% oxygen and 99% deuterium, align closely with measured neutral tungsten (W-I) spectroscopic data for the discharge #57877, validating the framework's accuracy. Currently, the STRIPE framework is being extended to investigate plasma-material interactions in other RF-heated linear and toroidal devices, offering valuable insights for RF antenna design, impurity control, and performance optimization in future fusion reactors.
