Control of the Safety Factor Profile in a Tokamak uses Lyapunov techniques to address a challenging problem for which even the simplest physically relevant models are represented by nonlinear, time-dependent, partial differential equations (PDEs). This is because of the spatiotemporal dynamics of transport phenomena (magnetic flux, heat, densities, etc.) in the anisotropic plasma medium.

Robustness considerations are ubiquitous in the analysis and control design since direct measurements on the magnetic flux are impossible (its estimation relies on virtual sensors) and large...