Event generation and simulation of exception handling with the ITER PCSSP

The plasma control system simulation platform (PCSSP) for ITER shall support the analysis and development of methods to be used by the ITER plasma control system (PCS) for handling exceptions to optimize pulses and assist in machine protection. PCSSP will permit to investigate physical and technical events, such as component failures, control degradation, operation domain excess, plasma state bifurcation or instabilities, and interlock activity. Serving that purpose, the plasma, actuator, diagnostics and PCS simulation modules in PCSSP will be enhanced to compute nominal and off-normal data. Configured by an event schedule, an event generator will orchestrate the activation and manipulate the characteristics of such off-normal computation. In the simulated PCS exceptions will be handled in a pulse supervision layer operating on top of the pulse continuous control (PCC) feedback loops. It will monitor events, decide on which exceptions to respond, and compute new control references to modify PCC behavior. We discuss basic concepts for the event generation in PCSSP, and a preliminary architecture for exception handling in PCS, and show how these will be configured with event and pulse schedules.     

Preliminary Design of GDC System for KTX Device

KeDa Torus for eXperiment (KTX) is a reversed field pinch magnetic confinement fusion research device whose main parameters are between in the RFX and MST. The base vacuum of KTX is 1 × 10^?6 Pa. Six sets of turbomolecular pumps parallel installed in the six horizontal ports which served as the main pumping system for KTX and the diameters of the ports are 0.15 m. Before plasma discharge, glow discharge cleaning (GDC) system is applied to clean C, O and hydrocarbon impurity on the vacuum vessel (VV) surfaces of KTX. An inflation system and residual gas analyzer system are designed to supply the working gas and monitoring the effect of GDC respectively. According to the GDC experiment practice, the working gas pressure of the KTX GDC system is designed as 0.3 Pa, with average current density of 0.15 A/m². Two sets of the GDC probes are installed in KTX horizontal ports symmetrically with interval angle of 180º and the input current of each anode is 1.6 A. According to the current density distribution, the centre of the VV cross section is the superior working area for GDC anode, a screw-nut pairs with the cooperation of bellows can transfer the anode from its storage position to its working position, and the stroke of the screw-nut pairs is 0.5 m. Based on the temperature rise calculation, the maximum equilibrium temperature of the anode during glow discharge is about 275 °C (under 200 °C baking). The thermal stresses caused by the temperature distribution on the anode’s components especially in the vacuum brazing areas are inspected during GDC process. All the simulation results show that the structure and base material of the KTX GDC anode can work normally without additional active cooling system.     

Development of a compact torus injection system for the Keda Torus eXperiment

A compact torus injection system, KTX-CTI, has been developed for the planned injection experiments on the Keda Torus eXperiment (KTX) reversed field pinch (RFP) device to investigate the physics and engineering issues associated with interaction between a compact torus (CT) and RFP. The key interests include fueling directly into the reactor center, confinement improvement, and the injection of momentum and helicity into the RFP discharges. The CT velocity and mass have been measured using a multichannel optical fiber interferometer, and for the first time the time evolution of the CT density profile during CT propagation is obtained. The effects of discharge parameters on the number of injected particles, CT velocity and CT density have been characterized: the maximum hydrogen CT plasma mass, ${m}_{{\rm{CT}}},$ is 50 μg, corresponding to 30% of the mass in a typical KTX plasma; the CT velocity exceeds 120 km s⁻¹. It is observed for the first time that multiple CTs can be produced and emitted during a very short period (<100 μs) in one discharge, which is significant for the future study of repetitive CT injection, even with an ultra-high frequency.     

Development of the simulation platform between EAST plasma control system and the tokamak simulation code based on Simulink

Plasma control system (PCS),mainly developed for real-time feedback control calculation,plays a significant part during normal discharges in a magnetic fusion device,while the tokamak simulation code (TSC) is a nonlinear numerical model that studies the time evolution of an axisymmetric magnetized tokamak plasma.The motivation to combine these two codes for an integrated simulation is specified by the facts that the control system module in TSC is relatively simple compared to PCS,and meanwhile,newly-implemented control algorithms in PCS,before applied to experimental validations,require numerical validations against a tokamak plasma simulator that TSC can act as.In this paper,details of establishment of the integrated simulation framework between the EAST PCS and TSC are generically presented,and the poloidal power supply model and data acquisition model that have been implemented in this framework are described as well.In addition,the correctness of data interactions among the EAST PCS,Simulink and TSC is clearly confirmed during an interface test,and in a simulation test,the RZIP control scheme in the EAST PCS is numerically validated using this simulation platform.     

Capability Assessment of the Equilibrium Field System in KTX

Radial equilibrium of the KTX plasma column is maintained by the vertical field which is produced by the equilibrium field coils.The equilibrium is also affected by the eddy current,which is generated by the coupling of copper shell,plasma and poloidal field coils.An equivalent circuit model is developed to analyze the dynamic performance of equilibrium field coils,without auxiliary power input to equilibrium field coils and passive conductors.Considering the coupling of poloidal field coils,copper shell and plasma,the evolution of spatial distribution of the eddy current density on the copper shell is estimated by finite element to analyze the effect of shell to balance.The simulation results show that the copper shell and equilibrium field coils can provide enough vertical field to balance 1 MA plasma current in phase 1 of a KTX discharge.Auxiliary power supply on the EQ coils is necessary to control the horizontal displacement of KTX due to the finite resistance effect of the shell.     

Fast radial scanning probe system on KTX

A fast radial scanning probe system was constructed for the Keda Torus eXperiment(KTX) to measure the profiles of boundary plasma parameters such as floating potential, electron density,temperature, transport fluxes, etc. The scanning probe system is driven by slow and fast motion mechanisms, corresponding to the stand-by movement of a stepping motor and the fast scanning movement of a high-torque servo-motor, respectively. In fast scanning, the scanner drives the probe radially up to 20 cm at a maximum velocity of 4.0 m s~(-1). A noncontact magnetic grating ruler with a high spatial resolution of 5 μm is used for the displacement measurement. New scanning probe can reach the center of plasmas rapidly. The comparison of plasma floating potential profiles obtained by a fixed radial rake probe and the single scanning probe suggests that the high-speed scanning probe system is reliable for measuring edge plasma parameter profiles on the KTX device.     

Analysis of an Extreme Scenario in the Vacuum Vessel in KTX

The Vacuum Vessel(VV) system is a vital component of Keda Torus for experiment(KTX).Various accidental scenarios might occur on the VV.In this report,an extreme scenario is assumed and studied:plasma accidental termination during the flat-top stage.Numerical simulations based on finite element are performed as the major tool for analyses.The detailed distributions of eddy and the reaction forces on VV are extracted,and the total eddy current and the maximum reaction force due to electromagnetic load are figured out.In addition,according to the results,the VV can be approximately regarded as a centrally symmetric structure,even though its ports distribution is asymmetric.     

Verification and Optimization of Vacuum Vessel Supports Design in KTX

The Vacuum Vessel(VV) system is an essential component of Keda Torus for experiment(KTX),and various scenarios might take place on it.The VV’s supports should be adequately strong to stand against various loads on VV,which might happen in extreme scenarios.Therefore,the design of VV supports is verified in a single extreme scenario and is subsequently optimized in this report.The numerical simulation based on Finite Element theory is performed as the major method for analysis and optimization.The electromagnetic force in previous analyses serves as the load for the mechanical analyses of supports.During the optimization,the stresses of the W supports decrease remarkably after introducing cotters.Finally,the optimum design has been worked out.It satisfies the requirements regarding the strength and convenience in assembly.     

The renewed HT-7 plasma control system based on real-time Linux cluster

In order to improve the synchronization, flexibility and expansibility of the plasma control on HT-7, a new plasma control system (HT-7 PCS) was constructed. The HT-7 PCS was based on a real-time Linux cluster with a well-defined, robust and flexible software infrastructure which was adapted from DIII-D PCS. In this paper, the hardware structure and system customization details for HT-7 PCS are reported. The plasma position and current control, plasma density control and off-normal event detection, which were realized in separated systems originally, have been integrated and implemented in such HT-7 PCS. All these control algorithms have been successfully validated in the last several HT-7 experiment campaigns. Good control performance has been achieved and the experiment results are discussed in the paper.     

Preliminary design of KTX magnet system

KTX is a reversed field pinch magnetic confinement device of which the magnet system is designed in ASIPP and USTC. The main parameter of KTX is between RFX and MST. Its magnet system includes the toroidal field (TF) winding and poloidal field (PF) winding (ohmic heating winding and equilibrium field winding), which are less complex than tokamak device due to the fact that a tokamak requires a superconducting system to perform quasi-steady state operation and achieve Q > 10. However, the most important part of the magnet system design lies in how to keep the TF magnetic field ripple, as well as any kinds of stray field, to a minimum value. The main design activities of the KTX magnet system are presented as detailed as possible in this paper, and the main activities which have already been completed include magnet coils position and winding, insulation design, plasma modeling prediction, thermal analysis, magnetic field calculations were analyzed and so on. The magnet system design is one of the major activities for KTX device design, which is effective guarantee for the future R&D and manufacture. Besides, the detailed design activities should be continuously optimized and changed based on the results from future R&D and relevant tests.     

The web-based user interface for EAST plasma control system

The plasma control system (PCS) plays a vital role at EAST for fusion science experiments. Its software application consists of two main parts: an IDL graphical user interface for setting a large number of plasma parameters to specify each discharge, several programs for performing the real-time feedback control and managing the whole control system. The PCS user interface can be used from any X11 Windows client with privileged access to the PCS computer system. However, remote access to the PCS system via the IDL user interface becomes an extreme inconvenience due to the high network latency to draw or operate the interfaces. In order to realize lower latency for remote access to the PCS system, a web-based system has been developed for EAST recently. The setup data are retrieved from the PCS system and client-side JavaScript draws the interfaces into the user's browser. The user settings are also sent back to the PCS system for controlling discharges. These technologies allow the web-based user interface to be viewed by authorized users with a web browser and have it communicate with PCS server processes directly. It works together with the IDL interface and provides a new way to aid remote participation.     

Physics of the conceptual design of the ITER plasma control system

The ITER plasma control system (PCS) will play a central role in enabling the experimental program to attempt to sustain DT plasmas with Q = 10 for several hundred seconds and also support research toward the development of steady-state operation in ITER. The PCS is now in the final phase of its conceptual design. The PCS relies on about 45 diagnostic systems to assess real-time plasma conditions and about 20 actuator systems for overall control of ITER plasmas. It will integrate algorithms required for active control of a wide range of plasma parameters with sophisticated event forecasting and handling functions, which will enable appropriate transitions to be implemented, in real-time, in response to plasma evolution or actuator constraints.In specifying the PCS conceptual design, it is essential to define requirements related to all phases of plasma operation, ranging from early (non-active) H/He plasmas through high fusion gain inductive plasmas to fully non-inductive steady-state operation, to ensure that the PCS control functionality and architecture will be capable of satisfying the demands of the ITER research plan. The scope of the control functionality required of the PCS includes plasma equilibrium and density control commonly utilized in existing experiments, control of the plasma heat exhaust, control of a range of MHD instabilities (including mitigation of disruptions), and aspects such as control of the non-inductive current and the current profile required to maintain stable plasmas in steady-state scenarios. Control areas are often strongly coupled and the integrated control of the plasma to reach and sustain high plasma performance must apply multiple control functions simultaneously with a limited number of actuators. A sophisticated shared actuator management system is being designed to prioritize the goals that need to be controlled or weigh the algorithms and actuators in real-time according to dynamic control needs. The underlying architecture will be event-based so that many possible plasma or plant system events or faults could trigger automatic changes in the control algorithms or operational scenario, depending on real-time operating limits and conditions.     

Towards the conceptual design of the ITER real-time plasma control system

ITER will be the world's largest magnetic confinement tokamak fusion device and is currently under construction in southern France. The ITER Plasma Control System (PCS) is a fundamental component of the ITER Control, Data Access and Communication system (CODAC). It will control the evolution of all plasma parameters that are necessary to operate ITER throughout all phases of the discharge. The design and implementation of the PCS poses a number of unique challenges. The timescales of phenomena to be controlled spans three orders of magnitude, ranging from a few milliseconds to seconds. Novel control schemes, which have not been implemented at present-day machines need to be developed, and control schemes that are only done as demonstration experiments today will have to become routine. In addition, advances in computing technology and available physics models make the implementation of real-time or faster-than-real-time predictive calculations to forecast and subsequently to avoid disruptions or undesired plasma regimes feasible. This requires the PCS design to be adaptable in real-time to the results of these forecasting algorithms. A further novel feature is a sophisticated event handling system, which provides a means to deal with plasma related events (such as MHD instabilities or L-H transitions) or component failure. Finally, the schedule for design and implementation poses another challenge. The beginning of ITER operation will be in late 2020, but the conceptual design activity of the PCS has already commenced as required by the on-going development of diagnostics and actuators in the domestic agencies and the need for integration and testing. This activity is presently underway as a collaboration of international experts and the results will be published as a subsequent publication. In this paper, an overview about the main areas of intervention of the plasma control system will be given as well as a summary of the interfaces and the integration into ITER CODAC (networks, other applications, etc.). The limited amount of commissioning time foreseen for plasma control will make extensive testing and validation necessary. This should be done in an environment that is as close to the PCS version running the machine as possible. Furthermore, the integration with an Integrated Modeling Framework will lead to a versatile tool that can also be employed for pulse validation, control system development and testing as well as the development and validation of physics models. An overview of the requirements and possible structure of such an environment will also be presented.     

Progress and improvement of KSTAR plasma control using model-based control simulators

Superconducting tokamaks like KSTAR, EAST and ITER need elaborate magnetic controls mainly due to either the demanding experiment schedule or tighter hardware limitations caused by the superconducting coils. In order to reduce the operation runtime requirements, two types of plasma simulators for the KSTAR plasma control system (PCS) have been developed for improving axisymmetric magnetic controls. The first one is an open-loop type, which can reproduce the control done in an old shot by loading the corresponding diagnostics data and PCS setup. The other one, a closed-loop simulator based on a linear nonrigid plasma model, is designed to simulate dynamic responses of the plasma equilibrium and plasma current (I_p) due to changes of the axisymmetric poloidal field (PF) coil currents, poloidal beta, and internal inductance. The closed-loop simulator is the one that actually can test and enable alteration of the feedback control setup for the next shot. The simulators have been used routinely in 2012 plasma campaign, and the experimental performances of the axisymmetric shape control algorithm are enhanced. Quality of the real-time EFIT has been enhanced by utilizations of the open-loop type. Using the closed-loop type, the decoupling scheme of the plasma current control and axisymmetric shape controls are verified through both the simulations and experiments. By combining with the relay feedback tuning algorithm, the improved controls helped to maintain the shape suitable for longer H-mode (10–16 s) with the number of required commissioning shots largely reduced.     

Upgrade of plasma density feedback control systemin HT-7 tokamak

The HT-7 is a superconducting tokamak in China used to make researches on the controlled nuclear fusion as a national project for the fusion research. The plasma density feedback control subsystem is the one of the subsystems of the distributed control system in HT-7 tokamak (HT7DCS). The main function of the subsystem is to control the plasma density on real-time. For this reason, the real-time capability and good stability are the most significant factors, which will influence the control results. Since the former plasma density feedback control system (FPDFCS) based on Windows operation system could not fulfill such requirements well, a new subsystem has to be developed. The paper describes the upgrade of the plasma density feedback control system (UPDFCS), based on the dual operation system (Windows and Linux), in detail.     

Plasma Start-up in HIT-II and NSTX Using Transient Coaxial Helicity Injection

The method of transient coaxial helicity injection (CHI) has previously been used in the HIT-II experiment at the University of Washington to produce 100 kA of closed flux current. The generation of the plasma current by CHI involves the process of magnetic reconnection, which has been experimentally controlled in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to allow this potentially unstable phenomenon to reorganize the magnetic field lines to form closed, nested magnetic surfaces carrying a plasma current up to 160 kA. This is a world record for non-inductive closed-flux current generation, and demonstrates the high current capability of this method.     

A simulation environment for ITER PCS development

A simulation environment known as the Plasma Control System Simulation Platform (PCSSP), specifically designed to support development of the ITER Plasma Control System (PCS), is currently under construction by an international team encompassing a cross-section of expertise in simulation and exception handling for plasma control. The proposed design addresses the challenging requirements of supporting the PCS design. This paper provides an overview of the PCSSP project and a discussion of some of the major features of its design. Plasma control for the ITER tokamak will be significantly more challenging than for existing fusion devices. An order of magnitude greater performance (e.g. [1], [2]) is needed for some types of control, which together with limited actuator authority, implies that optimized individual controllers and nonlinear saturation logic are required. At the same time, consequences of control failure are significantly more severe, which implies a conflicting requirement for robust control. It also implies a requirement for comprehensive and robust exception handling. Coordinated control of multiple competing objectives with significant interactions, together with many shared uses of actuators to control multiple variables, implies that highly integrated control logic and shared actuator management will be required. It remains a challenge for the integrated technologies to simultaneously address these multiple and often competing requirements to be demonstrated on existing fusion devices and adapted for ITER in time to support its operational schedule. We describe ways in which the PCSSP will help address these challenges to support design of both the ITER PCS itself and the algorithms that will be implemented therein, and at the same time greatly reduce the cost of that development. We summarize the current status of the PCSSP design task, including system requirements and preliminary design documents already delivered as well as features of the ongoing detailed architectural design. The methods being incorporated in the detailed design are based on prior experience with control simulation environments in fusion and on standard practices prevalent in development of control-intensive industrial product designs.     

Poloidal Field Control for the HT—7U Superconducting Tokamak

Controlling the poloidal field(PF) in the HT-7U superconducting tokamak is critical to the realization of the mission of advanced tokamak research.Plasma start-up,plasma position,shape,current control and plasma shape reconstruction have been performed as a part of its design process.The PF coils have been designed to produce a wide range of plasmas,Plasma start-up can be achieved for multiple conditions.Fast controlling coils for plasma position inside the vacuum vessel are sued for controloling the plasma vertical position on a short timescale.The PF coils control the plasma current and shape on a slower timescale,VXI(VME bus extensions for Instrumentation)Bus system and DSP(Digital Signal Processor is a basic unit of the feedback control system),the response time of which is about(2-4)ms.The basic unit of this system ,the shape-controlling algorithms of a few critical points on plasma boundary and real-time equilibrium fitting(RTEFIT)will be described in this paper.     

Actuator and diagnostic requirements of the ITER Plasma Control System

The ITER Plasma Control System (PCS) requires an extensive set of about 50 diagnostic systems to measure the plasma response and about 20 actuators to act on the plasma to carry out its control functions. The specifications and real limitations of the actuators and diagnostics are being assessed as part of the ongoing conceptual design of the PCS to understand the potential impact on plasma control. The actuators include magnetic coils (central solenoid (CS), poloidal field (PF), vertical stability (VS), edge localized mode (ELM), correction coils (CC)), heating and current drive (electron cyclotron (EC), ion cyclotron (IC), neutral beam injection (NBI), and possibly lower hybrid (LH)), glow discharge cleaning, fueling and impurity gas and pellet injection, vacuum pumping, and disruption mitigation systems. Diagnostic systems are prioritized according to their role in machine protection (MP), basic control (BC), advanced control (AC), and physics studies (PS). At the conceptual design phase, detailed control algorithms do not yet need to be specified, but conceptual solutions must be chosen that satisfy the PCS requirements for control within the real constraints of the diagnostics and actuators. The feasibility of the chosen solutions must be proven either through established control schemes on existing machines or through an R&D program to develop them before they will be required on ITER. The diagnostic and actuator requirements of the PCS will evolve from first plasma through the high performance DT phase. A comparison is made of the expected requirements to control vertical stability, sawteeth, neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs), edge localized modes (ELMs), error fields, resistive wall modes (RWMs), Alfvén eigenmodes, and disruptions with the ITER baseline actuator and diagnostic specifications.