A Note on Optimal Tokamak Control for Fusion Power Simulation

Abstract

The Tokamak device is the most promising candidate for producing sustainable electric power by nuclear fusion. It is a torus-shaped device that confines plasma by a strong magnetic field. The development, design and control of the design has been an important area of research, and a significant target is to effectively confine the extremely hot plasma inside its hollow torus-shaped body without touching its boundary for a prolonged period of time. In an attempt to control a Tokamak device, this paper investigates an optimal control problem for an incompressible, viscous, electrically conducting MHD fluid confined in a closed toroidal region in the presence of an applied current. The objective functional for the optimal control problem are subject to set of constraint equations, Navier-Stokes and Maxwell equations. We target the transient control of guiding the plasma to a desired flow at a particular short time instant, where it is expected that the flow had been designed offline to be the desired one from the point of view of steady state operation.