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(EXP4/07) Confinement Characteristics of the TPE Reversed Field Pinch Plasmas and Effects of the Boundary Configuration

Y. Yagi, Y. Maejima, G. Zollino1, G. Serianni1, H. Ji2, T. J. Baig*, H. Sakakita, S. Sekine, Y. Hirano, T. Shimada, H. Koguchi and I. Hirota

Electrotechnical Laboratory, AIST, MITI, 1-1-4 Umezono Tsukuba-shi, 305-8568, Japan
1 Consorzio RFX, Corso Stati Uniti 4, 35127, Padua, Italy
2 Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08543, USA
* On leave from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract.  Confinement characteristics of the TPE series reversed field pinch (RFP) machines, TPE-1RM15, TPE-1RM20 and TPE-1RM20mod, at Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) are summarized. Especially data are synthesized in respect to the effects of the different boundary structures of the machines, where shell proximity and overlapped poloidal shell gaps by the multi-layered shell structure are featured. Comparison of the experimental results is shown in terms of the characteristics of magnetic fluctuations, global confinement properties in general, operation capability of the improved confinement in high pinch parameter (Q) discharges and locked mode events. Linear growth rate of the unstable modes as a function of the shell distance is numerically simulated. Understandings of RFP plasma physics have also made progress by the most recent intensive experiments on correlation studies between fast electrons and dynamo activities and measurement of the plasma and mode rotation. TPE-1RM20mod was shutdown in December 1996 and new RFP experiment has started in TPE-RX from March 1998. The new machine also succeeds the concept of the shell configuration of the TPE-1RM20.

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IAEA 2001