Designing, Constructing and Using Plasma Control System Algorithms on DIII-D
Symposium on Fusion Engineering
San Francisco, California, USA, June 10-14, 2013
Abstract |
The DIII-D Plasma Control System (PCS [1]), initially deployed in the
early 1990’s, now controls nearly all aspects of the tokamak and plasma
environment. Versions of this PCS, supported by General Atomics, are
presently used to control several tokamaks around the world, including
the superconducting tokamaks EAST and KSTAR. The experimental challenges
posed by the advanced tokamak mission of DIII-D and the variety of
devices supported by the PCS have driven the development of a rich array
of control algorithms, along with a powerful set of tools for algorithm
design and testing. Broadly speaking, the PCS mission is to utilize all
available sensors, measurements and actuators to safely produce a plasma
state trajectory leading to and then maintaining the desired experimental
conditions. Often new physics understanding leads to new or modified
control requirements that use existing actuators in new ways.
[1] J. L. Luxon, "A design retrospective of the DIII-D tokamak,"
Nucl. Fusion, vol. 42, p. 614, 2002.