ASDEX Upgrade CODAC overview

ASDEX Upgrade's CODAC system integrates about 70 plant systems for diagnostics, magnets, heating and fuelling, vessel and protection. Plant and CODAC systems base on workstations with fast serial real-time data sampling, industrial PCs and PLCs, connected through standardized networks for exchange of time and real-time process data, protection information, audio/video streams and arbitrary data. The experiment cycle defines the procedure to develop the physics program: Pulse schedules are compiled as a distributed task among plant engineers and session leader. Prior to pulse execution plant data are exchanged and consistency validated by a central configuration server. Pulses are executed by plant systems communicating through real-time networks. Control has been designed for critical applications, to let it reliably execute complex and intelligent investment protection tasks. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.