In September and October 2013, I wrote three contributions on the steady progress of our Ph.D. Student Gillis Hommen, who was in the process of implementing a two camera Real Time optical imaging sensor for plasma boundary control on TCV.
It seemed like a fun idea to keep you up to date on the status and progress of the research, the concept, the implementation, the set-backs and the gradual improvements, and even used some of Gillis’e-mails to keep you up-to-date.
And then, suddenly, I did not report anymore. Did problems arise? Did the project fail? Quite the contrary: the results were fine, but I did not want to interfere with the publication process. Gillis directly wrote a publication that we submitted in February. We received favourable referee comments in March, and now the paper is accepted for publication in Nuclear Fusion .
One example of the experiments is shown in this youtube movie. The plasma is created and the X-point and strike-points are evolved until at t=0.45 s, the vision in loop system becomes active. Now, the plasma boundary is estimated in real-time from the optical images. A controlled ramp-down of the plasma vertical position is carried-out, demonstrating the RT control capabilities of the system.
Marco de Baar
Active Science 