Analysis of Fusion Burn Control Approaches Using METIS
M.D. Boyer, E. Schuster, S. Bremond, R. Nouailletas and J-F. Artaud
Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS)
Providence, Rhode Island, USA, October 29 - November 2, 2012
Abstract
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Controlling the fusion power through regulation of the plasma density
and temperature is one of the most fundamental problems in fusion
reactors and will be critical to the success of burning plasma
experiments like ITER. In this work, a vol- ume averaged model for the
evolution of the density of energy, deuterium and tritium fuel ions,
alpha-particles, and impurity ions is used to synthesize nonlinear
feedback controllers for stabilizing and modulating the burn condition.
Adaptive control tech- niques are used to account for modeling
uncertainty. The control approaches make use of the different possible
methods for altering the fusion power, including adjusting the
temperature through auxiliary heating, modulating the density or
isotopic mix through fueling, and altering the impurity density through
impurity injection. The different methods are simulated and compared
using a simulation framework based around METIS, a module of the CRONOS
code. The simulations include the effects of 1D plasma profiles and
particle recycling, and the framework allows for testing the robustness
and performance of the controllers in various scenarios, including
confinement changes, impurity content changes, and actuators faults.