Recent progress on the development and analysis of the ITPA global H-mode confinement database

McDonald, D. C.*; Cordey, J. G.*; Thomsen, K.*; Kardaun, O. J. W. F.*; Snipes, J. A.*; Greenwald, M.*; Sugiyama, L.*; Ryter, F.*; Kus, A.*; Stober, J.*; DeBoo, J. C.*; Petty, C. C.*; Bracco, G.*; Romanelli, M.*; Cui, Z.*; Liu, Y.*; Miura, Yukitoshi; Shinohara, Koji; Tsuzuki, Kazuhiro*; Kamada, Yutaka; Takizuka, Tomonori; Urano, Hajime; Valovic, M.*; Akers, R.*; Brickley, C.*; Sykes, A.*; Walsh, M. J.*; Kaye, S. M.*; Bush, C.*; Hogewei, D.*; Martin, Y. R.*; Cote, A.*; Pacher, G.*; Ongena, J.*; Imbeaux, F.*; Hoang, G. T.*; Lebedev, S.*; Chudnovskiy, A.*; Leonov, V.*

This paper describes the updates to and analysis of the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) Global H-node Confinement Database version 3 (DB3) over the period 1994-2004. Global data, for the energy confinement time and its controlling parameters, have now been collected from 18 machines of different sizes and shapes: ASDEX, ASDEX Upgrade, C-Mod CoMPASS-D, DIII-D, JET, JFT-2M, JT-60U, MAST, NSTX, PBX-M, PDX, START, T-10, TCV, TdeV, TFTR and TUMAN-3M. A wide range of physics studies has been performed on DB3 with particular progress made in the separation of core and edge behavior, dimensionless parameter analyses and the comparison of the database with one-dimensional transport code. A key aim of the database has always been to provide a basis for estimating the energy confinement properties of next step machines such as ITER, and so the impact of the database and its analysis on such machines is also discussed.