Effects of triangularity on confinement, density limit and profile stiffness of H-modes on ASDEX upgrade

Abstract
At ASDEX Upgrade the influence of triangularity on the H-mode performance has been studied intensively. It has been found that confinement increases with δ for a fixed line-averaged density. Though confinement decreases with increasing density for all analysed values of δ, H-factors (ITERH-98P) at the Greenwald density could be raised to 1 for the highest δ values achieved so far. The H-mode density limit could be increased by ≈20%. There is a scatter of about 30% on the confinement data, which is anti-correlated to the average density in the scrape-off layer or the neutral fluxes outside the plasma. For nearly all discharges analysed so far, the temperature profiles are self-similar. This indication of profile stiffness could be verified by changing the heat-flux profile by changing the beam-voltage of the neutral-beam injection (NBI) at high density. At low density, first results indicate a deviation from this stiff behaviour.