Multivariable Online Adaptive PID Controller for Plasma Current, Shape, and Position in Tokamaks

Nuclear fusion is one of the newest and most promising clean and safe energies hence, it imposes a new research area of control. In this paper, the design of a multivariable adaptive proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller for the control of the plasma current, shape and position to ensure the safe operation of the fusion reactor is successfully developed. The recursive least square algorithm is used in an alternative way as an adaptation mechanism for tuning PID controller gains. Since stability is a vital issue in the evaluation of control systems, therefore stability analysis of the proposed controller is developed using the Lyapunov stability theory. The main objective of plasma current, shape and position controller in fusion reactors is to improve the stability and the performance of tokamak magnetic systems without contravening the limits imposed by the actuating coils voltages physical limitations. The proposed APID (adaptive PID) controller tunes online its parameters to cope with the presence of the disturbance or any parameters changes occur during the operation. The results of the proposed APID on a simulation code of a tokamak show a noteworthy improvement with respect to those obtained with other control techniques in the cases of changing the initial controller gains, adding disturbance signal and variation in the reactor model parameters.