TRANSP-based closed-loop simulations of current profile optimal regulation in NSTX-Upgrade

Dataset · Thu Feb 28 23:00:00 EST 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.11578/1562086· OSTI ID:1562086

Ilhan, Z O ^[1]; D, Boyer M; Schuster, E

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1. OSTI

Active control of the toroidal current density profile is critical for the upgraded National Spherical Torus eXperiment device (NSTX-U) to maintain operation at the desired high-performance, MHD-stable, plasma regime. Initial efforts towards current density profile control have led to the development of a control-oriented, physics-based, plasma-response model, which combines the magnetic diffusion equation with empirical correlations for the kinetic profiles and the non-inductive current sources. The developed control-oriented model has been successfully tailored to the NSTX-U geometry and actuators. Moreover, a series of efforts have been made towards the design of model-based controllers, including a linear-quadratic-integral optimal control strategy that can regulate the current density profile around a prescribed target profile while rejecting disturbances. In this work, the tracking performance of the proposed current-profile optimal controller is tested in numerical simulations based on the physics-oriented code TRANSP. These high-fidelity closed-loop simulations, which are a critical step before experimental implementation and testing, are enabled by a flexible framework recentlydeveloped to perform feedback control design and simulation in TRANSP.

• Research Organization: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: U. S. Department of Energy
• OSTI ID: 1562086
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

NSTX-U
current profile control
plasma control