Luo Jia-rong

Real Time Equilibrium Reconstruction Algorithm in EAST Tokamak

The EAST (HT-7U) superconducting tokamak is a national project of China on fusion research, with a capability of long-pulse (~ 1000 s) operation. In order to realize a long-duration steady-state operation of EAST, some significant capability of real-time control is required. It would be very crucial to obtain the current profile parameters and the plasma shapes in real time by a flexible control system. As those discharge parameters cannot be directly measured, so a current profile consistent with the magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium should be evaluated from external magnetic measurements, based on a linearized iterative least square method, which can meet the requirements of the measurements. The arithmetic that the EFIT (equilibrium fitting code) is used for reference will be given in this paper and the computational efforts are reduced by parametrizing the current profile linearly in terms of a number of physical parameters. In order to introduce this reconstruction algorithm clearly, the main hardware design will be listed also.

Enhanced Plasma Performance by ICRF Boronization

Boronization with carborane (C2B10H12) by ICRF has been applied routinely to the walls of HT-7 super-conducting tokamak for the reduction of impurity influx, especially carbon and oxygen. Significant suppression of metallic impurities and radiating power fraction are achieved. The improved confinement for both particle and energy is observed in full range of operation parameters. Energy balance analysis shows that electron heat diffusion coefficient is strongly reduced. Measurements by Langmuir probes at the edge plasma show that the poloidal velocity shear after boronization is changed to a profile favoring to good confinement. The main emphasis of this paper is to describe effects of boronization on aspects of the enhanced plasma performance.

Review of the Equilibrium Fitting for Non-Circular Tokamak

As the equilibrium fitting code (EFIT) is developing to perform the magnetic and the kinetic-magnetic analysis for tokamak device operation, it can be not only run in either the fitting mode or the equilibrium mode but also control operation of modern experimental fusion device. In this paper the history of EFIT code and its capabilities are described in section 2. A brief description of the off-line EFIT code and the development of the real-time EFIT (RTEFIT) code is shown in section 3 and 4 respectively. In the last section the summary of this paper is given.

Removal of Particles by ICRF Cleaning in HT-7 Superconducting Tokamak

The ICRF (Ion Cyclotron Range Frequency) cleaning technique has been used as a routine wall cleaning method in the HT-7 superconducting tokamak. In a wide range of toroidal field, the removal rate of residual gas by ICRF cleaning was about twenty times higher than that of glow discharge cleaning (GDC). At different gas pressure and RF power levels, the ICRF cleaning is studied carefully. A good impurity cleaning effect and a very high hydrogen removal rate were obtained. The removal rate of hydrogen by 5 kW ICRF cleaning achieved was 1.6 × 10-5 Torr.l/s. And the relationships among pressure P, outgassing rate Q, atomic layers L absorbed on surface and the cleaning mode were discussed briefly.

Dynamic Stabilization by Modulated Toroidal Current on the HT-7 Superconducting Tokamak

The technique of toroidal current modulation has been successfully used in suppressing magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) perturbations effectively on the HT-7 superconducting tokamak. When the ratio of amplitude of plasma modulated current ΔIp versus the equilibrium plasma current Ip0 is about 12-30%, the resonance surface is moved outside the island width, and the suppression of MHD perturbations is observed. The disruption induced by tearing mode instability is delayed or avoided. Different formats of frequency modulated are compared.

Application of MDSplus on EAST Tokamak

EAST is a fully superconducting Tokamak in China used for controlled fusion research. MDSplus, a special software package for fusion research, has been used successfully as a central repository for analysed data and PCS (Plasma Control System) data since the debugging experiment in the spring of 2006 [1]. In this paper, the reasons for choosing MDSplus as the analysis database and the way to use it are presented in detail, along with the solution to the problem that part of the MDSplus library does not work in the multithread mode. The experiment showed that the data system based on MDSplus operated stably and it could provide a better performance especially for remote users.

Experimental Results of MHD Suppression with Modulated LHCD on the HT-7 Tokamak

Modulation of lower hybrid current drive was used successfully to suppress MHD activity. This was achieved in discharges with MHD m = 2 tearing modes during the discharge conditions Ip = 110 kA, Bt = 1.75 T, e0 similar 1.1 × 1013 cm-3. The delivering time of LHCD pulse is less then 30 μs. The amplitude, interval and the period of LHCD modulation pulse can be adjusted very conveniently. The modulation LHCD can be delivered very fast at any time during the discharge. The modulation LHCD period was always much shorter than the plasma resistive time (τη ~ 100 ms). So the profile of plasma current is changed much faster than the plasma resistive time. The different forms of LHCD modulating can be proved.

The Compression Algorithm for the Data Acquisition System in HT-7 Tokamak

HT-7 superconducting tokamak in the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is an experimental device for fusion research in China. The main task of the data acquisition system of HT-7 is to acquire, store, analyze and index the data. The volume of the data is nearly up to hundreds of million bytes. Besides the hardware and software support, a great capacity of data storage, process and transfer is a more important problem. To deal with this problem, the key technology is data compression algorithm. In the paper, the data format in HT-7 is introduced first, then the data compression algorithm, LZO, being a kind of portable lossless data compression algorithm with ANSI C, is analyzed. This compression algorithm, which fits well with the data acquisition and distribution in the nuclear fusion experiment, offers a pretty fast compression and extremely fast decompression. At last the performance evaluation of LZO application in HT-7 is given.

The Experiment of Modulated Toroidal Current on HT-7 and HT-6M Tokamak

The Experiments of Modulated Toroidal Current were done on the HT-6M tokamak and HT-7 superconducting tokamak. The toroidal current was modulated by programming the Ohmic heating field. Modulation of the plasma current has been used successfully to suppress MHD activity in discharges near the density limit where large MHD m = 2 tearing modes were suppressed by sufficiently large plasma current oscillations. The improved Ohmic confinement phase was observed during modulating toroidal current (MTC) on the Hefei Tokamak-6M (HT-6M) and Hefei superconducting Tokamak-7 (HT-7). A toroidal frequency-modulated current, induced by a modulated loop voltage, was added on the plasma equilibrium current. The ratio of A.C. amplitude of plasma current to the main plasma current ΔIp/Ip is about 12%-30%. The different formats of the frequency-modulated toroidal current were compared.

Improved Confinement by Edge Multi-pulse Turbulent Heating on HT-6M Tokamak

In the recent experiment on HT-6M tokamak, an improved ohmic confinement phase has been observed after application of the edge multi-pulse turbulent heating, and variance of plasma current ΔIp/Ip is about 14-20%. The improved edge plasma confinement phase is characterized by (a) increased average electron density e and electron temperature Te; (b) reduced Hα radiation from the edge; (c) steeper density and temperature profiles at the edge; (d) a more negative radial electric field over a region of ~ 5 mm deep inside the limiter; (e) a deeper electrostatic potential well at the edge; (f) reduced magnetic fluctuations at the edge.