Improvements for real-time magnetic equilibrium reconstruction on ASDEX Upgrade

Real-time magnetic equilibria are needed for NTM stabilization and disruption avoidance experiments on ASDEX Upgrade. Five improvements to real-time magnetic equilibrium reconstruction on ASDEX Upgrade have been investigated. The aim is to include as many features of the offline magnetic equilibrium reconstruction code in the real-time equilibrium reconstruction code. Firstly, spline current density basis functions with regularization are used in the offline equilibrium reconstruction code, CLISTE [1]. It is now possible to have the same number of spline basis functions in the real-time code. Secondly, in the presence of edge localized modes, (ELM's), it is found to be necessary to include the low pass filter effect of the vacuum vessel on the fast position control coil currents to correctly compensate the magnetic probes for current oscillations in these coils. Thirdly, the introduction of ferromagnetic tiles in ASDEX Upgrade means that a real-time algorithm for including the perturbations of the magnetic equilibrium generated by these tiles is required. A methodology based on tile surface currents is described. Fourthly, during current ramps it was seen that the difference between fitted and measured magnetic measurements in the equilibrium reconstruction were larger than in the constant current phase. External loop voltage measurements and magnetic probe pairs inside and outside the vessel wall were used to measure the vacuum vessel wall resistivity. This is the first step towards including vacuum vessel currents during the plasma current ramp in the real-time equilibrium reconstruction. Fifthly, the introduction of a constraint of the safety factor on the magnetic axis is found to be a helpful method to improve the prediction of the location of rational surfaces for NTM stabilization and disruption avoidance experiments. Soft X-ray tomography is used to assess the quality of the real-time magnetic equilibrium reconstruction using this internal constraint. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.