Measurement of the nonaxisymmetric heat load distribution on the first wall of TFTR due to locked modes

The first wall of TFTR is covered in large part (23%) by an inner‐wall bumper limiter which is the primary power handling structure in TFTR. The limiter is comprised of more than 2000 tiles, and is instrumented with a large number (≳100) of thermocouples in a two‐dimensional (2D) array, primarily for protection of the wall. While only about 5% of the tiles are monitored, this thermocouple system is nevertheless capable of mapping details in the nonaxisymmetric, as well as symmetric, heat load patterns encountered under different conditions. In particular, helical heating patterns are observed in discharges which have locked modes. The helical patterns clearly match the expected trajectories based on the m/n mode numbers obtained from Mirnov coils (m/n=2/1 and 4/1), so that the thermocouple system can and was used to identify the existence and mode number of a locked mode. While TFTR discharges rarely suffer from locked modes, locked modes always alter the heating pattern. The locked modes are found to ver...