Control-oriented models for plasma magnetic confinement coils

Nowadays there exist two main magnetic fusion devices topologies: tokamaks and stellarators. In the last years stellarators have shown to be a great alternative to tokamaks due to its ability to operate in continuous mode, which would allow a higher commercial profitability. In this kind of devices, the magnetic confinement is fully achieved by the coils, so that no plasma current is needed to confine. This involves the need of an appropriate real-time control of the stellarator coils. This work presents a simple control-oriented model for plasma magnetic confinement coils. The model is adjusted and validated by means of experimental data. Based on this model, a real-time predictive control scheme is implemented and compared with traditional controllers. Results show the validity of the proposed schemes.