Tokamak-agnostic actuator management for multi-task integrated control with application to TCV and ITER

• Published in: Fusion engineering and design 2019-10, Vol.147, p.111260, Article 111260
• Main Authors: Vu, N.M. Trang, Blanken, T.C., Felici, F., Galperti, C., Kong, M., Maljaars, E., Sauter, O.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Actuator management; Actuators; Control systems; Control tasks; Controllers; Event handling; Physicists; Plasma (physics); Plasma control; Plasma control system; Plasma integrated control; Product development; Stability; Tokamak devices
• ISSN: 0920-3796; 1873-7196
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fusengdes.2019.111260

•A PCS scheme is proposed for multiple tasks and event handling with shared actuators.•The PCS is decomposed into a tokamak-dependent layer and a tokamak-agnostic layer.•A task-based approach is developed and used in the tokamak-agnostic layer.•Controllers without highlevel decisions can be designed independently of the tokamaks.•Standardized interfaces between components improve implementation and maintainability. The plasma control system (PCS) of a long-pulse tokamak must be able to handle multiple control tasks simultaneously, and must be capable of robust event handling with a limited set of actuators. For ITER, this is particularly challenging given the large number of actuator-conflicting control requirements. To deal with these issues, this work develops a task-based approach, where a plasma supervisory controller and an actuator manager make high-level decisions on how to handle the considered control tasks, using generic actuator resources and controllers. This simplifies the interface for operators and physicists since the generic control tasks (instead of controllers) can be directly defined from the general physics goals. This approach also allows one to decompose the PCS into a tokamak-dependent layer and a tokamak-agnostic layer. The developed scheme is first implemented and tested on TCV for simultaneous β control, neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) control, central co-current drive, and H-mode control tasks. It is then applied to an ITER test scenario to prove its flexibility and applicability to systematically handle a large number of tasks and actuators.