Abstract

Active magnetic control is a fundamental requirement for the stable operation of tokamak plasmas. Apart from the vertical instability of elongated plasmas, precise control over the magnetic geometry is essential for achieving and maintaining desired plasma shapes with high accuracy, managing power exhaust, maintaining clearances to plasma-facing components and instruments, and mitigating the effects of strong perturbations or disruptions. The Tokamak à Configuration Variable (TCV), with its unique shaping flexibility through 16 independently controlled poloidal field coils, serves as an ideal test-bed for the design and validation of magnetic control strategies. In this presentation, we provide a brief overview of current and future developments in magnetic control at TCV. We discuss the role of FGE, a free-boundary Grad-Shafranov evolutive solver and part of the MEQ code suite, as a simulation tool enabling closed-loop validation and model-based design for controller development. Furthermore, we introduce the FMag real-time control architecture which proved crucial for many of the recent advancements for magnetic control at TCV. Finally, we will showcase the recent advancement of stabilizing Doublet plasmas in TCV, an achievement which has remained elusive for over three decades. In particular, we will explore the concept of fast shape control for Doublets and single-axis plasmas as a high-performance approach for magnetic control.