A two-time-scale model-based combined magnetic and kinetic control system for advanced tokamak scenarios on DIII-D

System identification techniques have been successfully used to obtain linear dynamic plasma response models around a particular equilibrium in different tokamaks. This paper identifies a two-time-scale dynamic model of the rotational transform ι profile and β
_N
in response to the electric field due to induction as well as to heating and current drive (H&CD) systems based on experimental data from DIII-D. The control goal is to regulate the plasma ι profile and β
_N
around a particular target value. A singular value decomposition (SVD) of the plasma model at steady state is carried out to decouple the system and identify the most relevant control channels. A mixed sensitivity H
_∞
control design problem is solved to determine a stabilizing feedback controller that minimizes the reference tracking error and rejects external disturbances with minimal control energy. The feedback controller is augmented with an anti-windup compensator, which keeps the given controller well-behaved in the presence of magnitude constraints in the actuators and leaves the nominal closed-loop unmodified when no saturation is present. Experimental results illustrate the performance of the proposed controller, which is one of the first profile controllers integrating magnetic and kinetic variables ever implemented in DIII-D.