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Title: Experimental constraints on transport from dimensionless parameter scaling studies

Conference ·
OSTI ID:578724
; ;  [1]
  1. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States); and others

The scalings of heat transport with safety factor (q), normalized collisionality (v), plasma beta ({beta}), and relative gyroradius ({rho}*) have been measured on the DIII-D tokamak. The measured {rho}* {beta} and v scalings of heat transport indicate that E x B transport from drive wave turbulence is a plausible basis for anomalous transport. For high confinement (H) mode plasmas where the safety factor was varied at fixed magnetic shear, the effective (or one-fluid) thermal diffusivity was found to scale like {chi}{sub eff} {proportional_to} q{sup 2.3{+-}0.64}, with the ion and electron fluids having the same q scaling to within the experimental errors except near the plasma edge. The scaling of the thermal confinement time with safety factor was in good agreement with this local transport dependence, {tau}{sub th} {proportional_to} q{sup {minus}2.42{+-}0.31}; however, when the magnetic shear was allowed to vary to keep q{sub 0} fixed during the (edge) safety factor scan, a weaker global dependence was observed, {tau}{sub th} {proportional_to} q{sub 95}{sup {minus}1.43{+-}0.23}. This weaker dependence was mainly due to the change in the local value of q between the two types of scans. The combined {rho}*, {beta}, v and q scalings of heat transport for H-mode plasmas on DIII-D reproduce the empirical confinement scaling using physical (dimensionless) parameters with the exception of weaker power degradation.

Research Organization:
General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AC03-89ER51114; W-7405-ENG-48; AC05-96OR22464
OSTI ID:
578724
Report Number(s):
GA-A22788; CONF-971103-; ON: DE98003184; TRN: 98:003924
Resource Relation:
Conference: 39. annual meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society, Pittsburgh, PA (United States), 17-21 Nov 1997; Other Information: PBD: Feb 1998
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English