Speaker
Description
The Plasma Control System (PCS) is one of the main ITER systems. It is in charge of running the plasma discharge, by receiving data from the real-time diagnostics, and by computing the commands to be processed by various plant systems to act on the plasma (e.g., the power supplies of the poloidal field coil circuits and the additional heating systems).
To this aim, the PCS will implement several different functions, which will be not limited to control algorithms, but they will also include support functions that process the inputs acquired from different diagnostics, and exception handling. There are many different types of requirements for the ITER PCS (functional, architectural, operational, etc.), which come from a heterogeneous set of sources. Moreover, the design of some plant systems the PCS has to interface with is not yet finalized, and the way ITER will be operated is also under development.
In such a complex context, it is essential to rely on a system-engineering oriented approach for requirements management, to both track the development of the PCS and to assess the compliance of the product with the requirements set expressed at each operational phase (first plasma operation, D-T operations, etc.). The current ITER choice is to use of the so-called PCS Database (PCS DB) that acts as the central collaboration tool for the system design and is deployed using Enterprise Architect. The PCS DB not only traces system requirements to higher level ones, but also maps PCS functions to the architectural components and to simulation models, in order to document the set of the PCS functionalities and prototypes.
In this paper, the overall methodology for the PCS requirements management process, and the current status of the PCS DB will be described, focusing on the elements relevant for first plasma operations.
