EFDA-JET-CP(12)04/33
Developing and Testing the EPED Pedestal Model
The pressure at the top of the edge transport barrier (or "pedestal height") strongly impacts global confinement and fusion performance, while large Edge Localized Modes (ELMs) can significantly limit component lifetimes. The EPED model predicts the H-mode pedestal height and width based upon two fundamental and calculable constraints: 1) onset of non-local Peeling-Ballooning (P-B) modes at low to intermediate mode number, 2) onset of nearly local Kinetic Ballooning Modes (KBM) at high mode number. The model calculates both constraints directly with no fit parameters, using ELITE to calculate the P-B constraint, and a "BCP" technique to calculate the KBM constraint. EPED has been successfully compared to observed pedestal height for 270 cases on 5 tokamaks, finding agreement within ~20%. Here we briefly discuss the EPED model, recent experimental tests, application to ELM-suppressed regimes, ITER predictions, and ongoing model development.