EFDA-JET-CP(04)07/27

Particle and Energy Transport in Dedicated r*, b and n* Scans in JET ELMy H-modes

Studying plasma transport in terms of the non-dimensional parameters (r*, b, n*) is a natural way to separate important physical transport processes. r*, the ion Larmor radius normalised to the plasma minor radius, separates Bohm/gyro-Bohm transport; b, the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure separates electrostatic and electromagnetic transport; and n*, the ion collision rate scaled to the ion bounce frequency, describes the effect of collisionality. With this in mind, scans have been performed on JET (MarkIIGB-SRP divertor) with one of r*, b, n* varied whilst the other two remained fixed. Both particle transport, using trace tritium (T) injection, and energy transport have been studied. The r* behaviour of energy and trace T transport is found to be consistent with the essentially gyro-Bohm like dependence of the scaling used in the ITER design, IPB98(y,2), although trace T confinement in the outer region (x = 0.65-0.85) is Bohm like (D/B0µr*-1.90±0.38). The n* scans showed energy confinement decreasing with increasing n* (B0.tEµn*-0.35±0.04 ) more strongly than in IPB98(y,2), with trace T confinement having the opposite trend although the results are more ambiguous. In contrast to IPB98(y,2) the three b scans show a negligible effect of b on energy confinement (B0.tEµb*0.04 , b*-0.03, b*-0.01), which is consistent with electrostatic models. Trace T confinement, however, increases with increasing b (DµDg-Bohm.b*-0.34±0.08 , DµDBohm.b*-0.55±0.09 ) which is inconsistent with IPB98(y,2) and electrostatic models, but is shown to be consistent with a model based on stochastic electromagnetic fields. It remains to describe both particle and energy transport with a unified model. Extrapolation of these results to ITER indicates a moderate increase in energy confinement time for bN = 1.8 (2%), but a dramatic improvement for higher bN (e.g. 50% higher for bN = 3). The impact on ITER of increased particle confinement at high bN remains to be assessed.
Name Size  
EFDC040727 857.82 Kb