First Wall Heat Load Control Design for ITER With a Model-Based Approach

The design of real time heat load protection functions for the ITER tokamak first wall (FW) plasma-facing components (PFCs) requires the development of simplified, but reliable control-oriented models. The dynamics of interest in this case encompasses slow changes in plasma shape or transient increases in wall power loading. For this purpose, this study presents a new lightweight framework for simulating the FW thermal response during a plasma discharge, validated against higher fidelity codes and developed in a MATLAB/Simulink environment specifically for rapid prototyping and testing of control schemes. This innovative tool allows the ITER FW heat load controller to be designed in the plasma control system simulation platform (PCSSP) following a model-based approach, where a dynamical model of the physical process to control is an integral part of the controller synthesis procedure.