Demonstration of real-time control for poloidal beta in KSTAR

•Real time control system for poloidal beta has been designed in KSTAR.•Poloidal beta has been calculated based on the diamagnetic loop signals.•The neutral beam Injector plays a role as the actuator.•The control system has been validated in the KSTAR experiments.

Sustaining the plasma in a stable and a high performance condition is one of the important control issues for future steady state tokamaks. In the 2014 KSTAR campaign, we have developed a real-time poloidal beta (βp) control technique and carried out preliminary experiments to identify its feasibility. In the control system, the βp is calculated in real time using the measured diamagnetic loop signal, and compared with the target value leading to the change of the neutral beam (NB) heating power using a feedback PID control algorithm. To match the requested power of NB which is operated with constant voltage, the on-time periods of the intervals were adjusted as the ratio of the required power to the maximum achievable one. This paper will present the overall procedures of the βp control, the βp estimation process and NB operation scheme implemented in the plasma control system (PCS), and the analysis on the preliminary experimental results.