The MAST Upgrade plasma control system

Abstract The plasma control system (PCS) for MAST Upgrade inherits most of the original MAST hardware / software architecture, which was based on an architecture developed by General Atomics. Whilst the digital control hardware has already had a mid-service upgrade on MAST, some additional I/O was required to support the numerous additional input signals, poloidal field (PF) coils and gas channels on MAST-U. The generic software infrastructure from General Atomics has been retained for MAST-U but the tokamak-specific algorithm software has been substantially re-written to support the additional capabilities of MAST-U, especially in the areas of gas injection control and coil current control. The software structure presented here has been designed to provide maximum flexibility to exploit the new features of MAST-U whilst maintaining a manageable degree of complexity in the operation of the system.