Machine Control System for Large Volume Plasma Device: Current Status and Future Directions

Full text: The Large Volume Plasma Device (LVPD) is a cylindrical shaped pulsed plasma device dedicated in carrying investigations relevant to fusion and magneto-spheric plasma. For meeting requirements for its upgrade, efforts are in progress towards enhancing plasma duration (t_pulse ∼ 9-50 ms), to cater to the needs of controlled experiments on electron temperature gradient (ETG) turbulence, a major source of plasma loss in fusion devices by suitably varying the density gradient scale length. The machine control system (MCS) has the responsibility of protected and integrated operation of the device using standardized interface. MCS consists of namely: 1) PXIe based data acquisition system, 2) Modbus based process automation system, and 3) RAID configured based data handling system. The PXIe based data acquisition system is already implemented and its upgradation for data processing to convert raw signals of various diagnostics to plasma parameters and up gradation of hardware for nonlinear structure study are underway. The Modbus bus has been selected for process automation of the device. Currently, process automation has been carried out for high current filament power supply and radially movable probe positioning system (∼ 12 numbers). The efforts are ongoing for extension of the automation for 3-axis probe drive system, camera based surveillance system, axial probe positioning, vacuum production system and different power supplies. A RAID configured server is under procurement for hosting MDS+ based data handling system. LabVIEW has been selected as supervisory data acquisition and control system for development. The novelty of the work lies in integration and handling of heterogeneous I&C controllers under single console. The paper will discuss the results obtained for integration and operation of machine control system. (author)