The PLASIMO project 
Towards a grand unified model to tackle the high tech plasma diversity 

Joost van der Mullen, TU/e  

One of the big differences between astrophysical plasmas on the one hand and 
technological plasmas on the other hand is the huge laboratory freedom in 
manipulating the plasma chemistry and the flexibility with respect to power 
coupling. This implies that understanding the operational trends of high tech 
plasmas demands for a flexible model-factory in which changes in e.g. 
chemistry can easily be made. If such a flexible platform is available one 
can easily change from one plasma condition to another; thereby facilitating 
comparative studies or parameter-space search-actions. 

PLASIMO is a platform for the construction of plasma models. The package, 
being strongly modular, is written in an object oriented way (C++). All the 
existing code is easily extendable and reusable for future applications.
With PLASIMO it is possible to construct models for both LTE and non-LTE 
plasmas; steady state or transient. This has been done for DC driven thermal 
arcs, high and low pressure DC lamps, the capacitively coupled plasma-needle 
(used in plasma surgery), inductively coupled plasmas (for light generation 
and spectral analysis) and microwave-induced plasmas (light generation, 
material processing).  Recently we were capable to model the strong dynamic 
non-LTE behavior of pulsed capillary discharges as used in the field of laser 
wake field acceleration. 
 
The transport-basis of PLASIMO is the system of continuum equations 
(conservation of mass, momentum and energy) that is solved using a control 
volume (CV) method. Recently much progress has been made in coupling the 
continuum equations with particle methods (constructing so-called hybrid 
models). One example is the creation and transport of radiation that is 
treated using a ray-trace (RT) method. In the RT-CV procedure the continuum 
equations and the equation of radiation transfer are solved in a 
self-consistent way. 
Another hybrid method is that of coupling the continuum description of bulk 
properties with a Monte Carlo sampling of high energetic electrons. 
PLASIMO features a graphical front-end which represents the hierarchical 
structure of the model, guides the simulation, controls the calculation and 
allows the user to monitor the behavior of the variables involved in the 
plasma model.  

The presentation will start with a general introduction of the model structure 
and the application field. After that, some specific results of case studies 
will be presented.