The Tore Supra control, computer system : six years of operation and improvements

The Tore Supra control computer system has been providing a good operation of the Tore Supra machine for six years. It controls all of the sub-systems, the continuous ones as well as the sequential ones, and the automatic operation is very efficient. The control system has been programmed by the users themselves thanks to its user-friendly qualities, in order to keep the full control and knowledge of the automatisms. Nevertheless, some improvements are now necessary. Their main principles are : to choose ergonomic and powerful tools, industrial standards, and to keep the users's participation. The whole control system will be upgraded : the automatism level as well as the display level and the communication networks. The operator's driving job is analysed as supervisory and diagnostic tasks which have an effect on the Tore Supra machine efficiency. So a very powerful driving software has been chosen and linked with an expert system, which is to be designed and implemented with the aim to give an immediate accurate and global understanding of the process and situations, in particular in case of trouble. The method is based on an artificial intelligence approach, and it exploits both the process' informations and automatisms' steps, to determine the process state, next possible states and diagnosis of the process troubles. (orig.)