Tokamak control systems have to deal with different kinds of instabilities related to the presence of a resistive wall that surrounds the plasma. These instabilities are known as Resistive Wall Modes and are both axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric; they can occur during normal operation of the tokamak, and therefore suitable feedback controllers need to be designed and implemented. In this paper we propose a control architecture able to deal with the two main instabilities: the axisymmetric vertical instability and the non-axisymmetric kink instability. With reference to the case of the ITER tokamak, we design a controller consisting of two separate loops, one for the vertical stabilization and the other one for the stabilization of the kink instability. The two loops are designed in such a way to minimize the control effort and the interaction between them. The effectiveness of the approach is shown in simulation on an appropriate ITER configuration.

Control of resistive wall modes in tokamak plasmas

ARIOLA, Marco;
2014-01-01

Abstract

Tokamak control systems have to deal with different kinds of instabilities related to the presence of a resistive wall that surrounds the plasma. These instabilities are known as Resistive Wall Modes and are both axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric; they can occur during normal operation of the tokamak, and therefore suitable feedback controllers need to be designed and implemented. In this paper we propose a control architecture able to deal with the two main instabilities: the axisymmetric vertical instability and the non-axisymmetric kink instability. With reference to the case of the ITER tokamak, we design a controller consisting of two separate loops, one for the vertical stabilization and the other one for the stabilization of the kink instability. The two loops are designed in such a way to minimize the control effort and the interaction between them. The effectiveness of the approach is shown in simulation on an appropriate ITER configuration.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11367/27483
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