Predictive Numerical Simulations of ECH Assisted H-mode scenarios at KSTAR

One of the early research topics in the KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research) project is to achieve a H-mode plasma in the absence of NBI to address its physics issues such as plasma confinement and momentum transport. The transition from low confinement mode (L-mode) to high confinement mode (H-mode), so-called L-H transition is believed to occur when plasma heating is applied above certain threshold value. In this work, a reliability of ECH (Electron Cyclotron Heating) assisted H-mode operation in the KSTAR tokamak is investigated by applying L-H power threshold scaling laws derived from the international H-mode power threshold database, which provides a possible operational domain of H-modes. In addition, predictive numerical simulations on KSTAR ECH-assisted H-mode are carried out using an integrated transport simulation code