The ICRF heating efficiency and the global energy confinement time duringICRF heating are investigated, including the effect of energetic ion loss in heliotrons.The approximate formula of ICRF heating efficiency is derived using results based on Monte Carlo simulations (Murakami, S., et al., Fusion Eng. Des. 26 (1995) 209). The global energy confinement time including the energetic ion effect can be expressed in heliotrons in terms of ICRF heating power, plasma density and magnetic field strength. Results in plasmas at CHS show a systematic decrease of the global energy confinement time due to energetic ion loss from the assumed energy confinement scaling law, which is consistent with the experimental observations. The model is also applied to ICRF minority heating in LHD plasmas in two cases of typical magnetic configurations. A clear increase of the global energy confinement time due to the stored energy of energetic tail ions is obtained in the `orbit improved' configuration, while a decrease is observed in the `standard' configuration.
Strong electron heating in CHS ICRF heating experiments