Matlab modeling of ITER CODAC

The ITER CODAC (COntrol, Data Access and Communication) conceptual design resulted from 2 years of activity. One result was a proposed functional partitioning of CODAC into different CODAC Systems, each of them partitioned into other CODAC Systems. Considering the large size of this project, simple use of human language assisted by figures would certainly be ineffective in creating an unambiguous description of all interactions and all relations between these Systems. Moreover, the underlying design is resident in the mind of the designers, who must consider all possible situations that could happen to each system. There is therefore a need to model the whole of CODAC with a clear and preferably graphical method, which allows the designers to verify the correctness and the consistency of their project. The aim of this paper is to describe the work started on ITER CODAC modeling using Matlab/Simulink. The main feature of this tool is the possibility of having a simple, graphical, intuitive representation of a complex system and ultimately to run a numerical simulation of it. Using Matlab/Simulink, each CODAC System was represented in a graphical and intuitive form with its relations and interactions through the definition of a small number of simple rules. In a Simulink diagram, each system was represented as a "black box", both containing, and connected to, a number of other systems. In this way it is possible to move vertically between systems on different levels, to show the relation of membership, or horizontally to analyse the information exchange between systems at the same level. This process can be iterated, starting from a global diagram, in which only CODAC appears with the Plant Systems and the external sites, and going deeper down to the mathematical model of each CODAC system. The Matlab/Simulink features for simulating the whole top diagram encourage us to develop the idea of completing the functionalities of all systems in order to finally have a full simulation of ITER CODAC. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.