Nonlinear Control of Burn Instability in Fusion Reactors
E. Schuster, M. Krstic and G. Tynan
40th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
Orlando, FL, USA, December 2001
Abstract
|
|
Control of plasma density and temperature magnitudes, as well as their
profiles, are among the most fundamental problems in fusion reactors.
Unfortunately, the economy of fusion reactors often requires the
reactor to operate under conditions in which the rate of thermonuclear
reaction increases as the plasma temperature rises. In this thermally
unstable zone, an active control system is necessary to stabilize the
thermonuclear reaction. Existing efforts use control techniques based
on linearized models. In this work, a zero-dimensional nonlinear model
involving approximate conservation equations for the energy and the
densities of the species was used to synthesize a nonlinear feedback
controller for stabilizing the burn condition of a fusion reactor. A
computer simulation study was performed to show the capability of the
controller and compare it with previous linear controllers.