Experimental System Design

Overview

Simulation tells you what might work. Hardware tells you what actually works.

Our experimental design work focuses on diagnostic infrastructure, validation platforms, and fuel-cycle-relevant subsystem concepts needed to systematically close the gap between simulation and physical behaviour.

This is not product development. This is the construction of instrumentation and test platforms required to rigorously validate or falsify the core hypothesis: that phase-synchronized injection can sustain fusion burn under reduced confinement constraints.

Detailed hardware designs are under active development and are not publicly disclosed.

Fuel Cycle Integration (Conceptual)

Long-term system viability requires consideration of fuel cycle closure, neutron management, and material activation. These aspects are treated as system-level constraints rather than near-term design targets.

Detailed breeding, shielding, and recovery architectures are outside the current experimental scope and will be addressed only once core burn-wave control and validation objectives are established.

Injection Hardware Concepts

We are investigating distributed, high-response injector architectures capable of precise phase-synchronized delivery in magnetized plasma environments. Design priorities include actuation speed, thermal robustness, and integration with diagnostic and control infrastructure.

Detailed mechanical designs are under active development and are not publicly disclosed.

Real-Time Diagnostics

WAFI depends on high-bandwidth diagnostic visibility into burn-front dynamics, wake structure, and system response. These measurements are tightly coupled to the control architecture to enable true closed-loop operation under rapidly evolving plasma conditions.

Rather than treating diagnostics as passive observers, we design them as active components of the control loop.

Key diagnostic objectives include:

• Burn-front and crest position tracking for phase alignment and stability control.
• Wake structure identification to determine entrainment windows and injection viability.
• Burn performance monitoring to assess energy confinement and propagation behaviour.
• Plasma-facing system integrity to ensure operational limits are respected during dynamic operation.

Diagnostic development is driven by control requirements, not by standalone measurement capability. Instrumentation is selected and designed to support feedback stability, latency constraints, and robustness under transport-driven perturbations.

Experimental Validation Pathway

Core WAFI mechanisms will be validated progressively using non-fusible plasmas before advancing to fusion-relevant conditions. This staged approach allows diagnostic validation, control loop testing, and wake detection algorithms to be de-risked under physically representative but non-fusible conditions prior to any deuterium or tritium operation.

Autonomous Operation and Protective Control

Fusion systems cannot rely on human intervention for fast transients. WAFI is designed around autonomous control logic operating on physical timescales set by burn-wave dynamics.

The control architecture is structured to manage:

• Normal operation: Phase-aligned injection, thermal regulation, and burn-front stabilization.
• Graceful degradation: Loss of phase coherence results in reduced burn and controlled decay of the wave.
• Protective response: Automated transition to a non-burning plasma state under loss of control authority.

Critically, loss of synchronization leads to loss of burn, not uncontrolled energy release. The system is architected such that failure modes are intrinsically non-violent.

Unlike confinement-dependent fusion concepts where loss of control can lead to disruptive plasma–wall interactions, WAFI degradation extinguishes the burn wave and leaves a warm, diffuse plasma state. There is no runaway heating and no disruption-driven force loading—only an unsuccessful ignition attempt.

This is a fundamental architectural advantage: the system does not depend on maintaining a marginally stable equilibrium. Control aligns with a naturally propagating wave. If alignment fails, the wave decays and the system resets.

Diagnostic Development Roadmap

• Current: Crest tracking and wake diagnostics implemented in BOUT++ simulations using phase-weighted spatial moments.
• Near-term: Synthetic diagnostic development (e.g. simulated Thomson scattering, soft X-ray, bolometry) derived from simulation outputs to validate observability and control coupling.
• Mid-term: Bench-scale non-fusible plasma experiments (e.g. helium discharge) with optical diagnostics to validate crest detection, latency, and noise tolerance.
• Longer-term: Extension to fusion-relevant plasma regimes with neutron-aware diagnostics used for validation of control performance under increased coupling complexity.
• Exploratory: Conceptual design studies for comprehensive diagnostic architectures suitable for future fusion-relevant test platforms.