A pedestal temperature model with self-consistent calculation of safety factor and magnetic shear

Abstract

A pedestal model based on theory-motivated models for the pedestal width and the pedestal pressure gradient is developed for the temperature at the top of the H-mode pedestal. The pedestal width model based on magnetic shear and flow shear stabilization is used in this study, where the pedestal pressure gradient is assumed to be limited by first stability of infinite n ballooning mode instability. This pedestal model is implemented in the 1.5D BALDUR integrated predictive modeling code, where the safety factor and magnetic shear are solved self-consistently in both core and pedestal regions. With the self-consistently approach for calculating safety factor and magnetic shear, the effect of bootstrap current can be correctly included in the pedestal model. The pedestal model is used to provide the boundary conditions in the simulations and the Multi-mode core transport model is used to describe the core transport. This new integrated modeling procedure of the BALDUR code is used to predict the temperature and density profiles of 26 H-mode discharges. Simulations are carried out for 13 discharges in the Joint European Torus and 13 discharges in the DIII-D tokamak. The average root-mean-square deviation between experimental data and the predicted profiles of the temperature and the density, normalized by their central values, is found to be about 14%.