Spatial Power Control of Singularly Perturbed Large Nuclear Reactor ?

Abstract

Controlling of large nuclear reactors is a challenging task due to simultaneous presence of both slow and fast varying dynamic modes. This paper presents the design of linear quadratic regulator for spatial power control of a large Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). The AHWR system is represented by 90 rst order nonlinear di erential equations with 5 inputs and 18 outputs. After linearization, the original ill-conditioned system of AHWR is represented into standard singularly perturbed two-time-scale form and decomposed into two comparatively lower order subsystems, namely, `slow' and `fast' subsystems of orders 73 and 17 respectively. Two individual optimal controllers are developed for both the subsystems and then a composite controller is obtained for original system. This composite controller is applied to the vectorized nonlinear model of AHWR. From dynamic simulation in representative transients, the suggested controller is found to be superior to other methods.