• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.134-140
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• 2017

A well-performed core power control to track load changes is crucial in pressurized water reactor (PWR) nuclear power stations. It is challenging to keep the core power stable at the desired value within acceptable error bands for the safety demands of the PWR due to the sensitivity of nuclear reactors. In this paper, a state-space model predictive control (MPC) method was applied to the control of the core power. The model for core power control was based on mathematical models of the reactor core, the MPC model, and quadratic programming (QP). The mathematical models of the reactor core were based on neutron dynamic models, thermal hydraulic models, and reactivity models. The MPC model was presented in state-space model form, and QP was introduced for optimization solution under system constraints. Simulations of the proposed state-space MPC control system in PWR were designed for control performance analysis, and the simulation results manifest the effectiveness and the good performance of the proposed control method for core power control.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.2048-2054
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• 2022

The coolant temperature feedback coefficient is an important parameter of reactor core power control system. To study the coolant temperature feedback coefficient influence on the core power control system of small PWR, the core power control system is built with the nonlinear model and fuzzy control theory. Then, the uncertainty quantification method of reactor core parameters is established based on the Latin hypercube sampling method and the Bootstrap method. Finally, under the conditions of reactivity step perturbation and coolant inlet temperature step perturbation, uncertainty analysis for two cases is carried out. The result shows that with fuzzy controller and fuzzy PID controller, the uncertainty of the coolant temperature feedback coefficient affects the core power control system, and the maximum uncertainties of core relative power, coolant temperature deviation, fuel temperature deviation and total reactivity are acceptable.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.851-859
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• 2021

Small PWR can be used for power generation and heating. Considering that small PWR has the characteristics of flexible operating conditions and complex operating environment, the controller designed based on single power level is difficult to achieve the ideal control of small PWR in the whole range of core power range. To solve this problem, a flexible switching controller based on fuzzy controller and LQG/LTR controller is designed. Firstly, a core fuzzy multi-model suitable for full power range is established. Then, T-S fuzzy rules are designed to realize the flexible switching between fuzzy controller and LQG/LTR controller. Finally, based on the core power feedback principle, the core flexible switching control system of small PWR is established and simulated. The results show that the flexible switching controller can effectively control the core power of small PWR and the control effect has the advantages of both fuzzy controller and LQG/LTR controller.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.10
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• pp.2173-2182
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• 2020

Control valves are widely used to regulate fluid flux in nuclear power plants, and there are more than 1500 control valves in the primary circuit of one nuclear power plant. With their help, the flux can be regulated to a specific level of water or steam to guarantee the energy efficiency and safety of the nuclear power plant. The flux characteristics of the control valve mainly depend on the valve core shape. In order to analyze the effects of valve core shapes on flux characteristics of control valves, this paper focuses on the valve core shapes. To begin with, numerical models of different valve core shapes are established, and results are compared with the ideal flux characteristics curve for the purpose of validation. Meanwhile, the flow fields corresponding to different valve core shapes are investigated. Moreover, relationships between the valve core opening and the outlet flux under different valve core shapes are carried out. The flux characteristics curve and equation are proposed to predict the outlet flux under different valve core openings. This work can benefit the further research of the flux control and the optimization of the valve core for control valves in nuclear power plants.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2017

A parallel control algorithm of thyristor dual-converter power system for the DC power supply of railway is proposed. The circulating current and current imbalance generated during parallel operation can be limited to control the output voltage of each power system by using the proposed parallel control algorithm. The proposed control algorithm can also eliminate output current sensor to achieve the same output response without additional costs. The validity of the proposed algorithm is verified through simulation and experiment.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1413-1421
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• 2014

This paper realize power control embedded system with one master of Core-A 32-bit RISC processor and several slaves controling power with synchronized digital signals. Core-A platform is consisted of Core-A processor, AMBA bus, SSRAM, AC97, DMA, UART, GPIO etc. Slave is made by both digital part and analog part. The former generates various power control patterns synchronized with master signal. The latter converts 220V power proportional to 4 bit digital signals. design of Embedded system is executed in Flowrian II, in which software is cross-compiled and hardware is verified by simulation. Embedded system is implemented in FPGA board and CPLD chips as well as PCB board for analog power control.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1253-1260
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• 2022

This paper reports the control method for the core power of the China initiative Accelerator Driven System (CiADS) facility. In the CiADS facility, an intense external neutron source provided by a proton accelerator coupled to a spallation target is used to drive a sub-critical reactor. Without any control rod inside the sub-critical reactor, the core power is controlled by adjusting the proton beam intensity. In order to continuously change the beam intensity, an adjustable aperture is considered to be used at the Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) line of the accelerator. The aperture size is adjusted based on the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers, by comparing either the setting beam intensity or the setting core power with the measured value. To evaluate the proposed control method, a CiADS core model is built based on the point reactor kinetics model with six delayed neutron groups. The simulations based on the CiADS core model have indicated that the core power can be controlled stably by adjusting the aperture size. The response time in the adjustment of the core power depends mainly on the adjustment time of the beam intensity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.97-106
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• 2018

Improved load-following capability is one of the most important technical tasks of a pressurized water reactor. Controlling the nuclear reactor core during load-following operation leads to some difficulties. These difficulties mainly arise from nuclear reactor core limitations in local power peaking: the core is subjected to sharp and large variation of local power density during transients. Axial offset (AO) is the parameter usually used to represent the core power peaking. One of the important local power peaking components in nuclear reactors is axial power peaking, which continuously changes. The main challenge of nuclear reactor control during load-following operation is to maintain the AO within acceptable limits, at a certain reference target value. This article proposes a new robust approach to AO control of pressurized water reactors during load-following operation. This method uses robust feedback-linearization control based on the multipoint kinetics reactor model (neutronic and thermal-hydraulic). In this model, the reactor core is divided into four nodes along the reactor axis. Simulation results show that this method improves the reactor load-following capability in the presence of parameter uncertainty and disturbances and can use optimum control rod groups to maneuver with variable overlapping.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.113-121
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• 2013

This paper introduces a simple core loss calculation method for output filter inductor in pulse width modulation (PWM) DC-AC inverter. Amorphous C-core (AMCC-320) is used to analyze the core loss. In order to measure core loss of the output filter inductor and validate the proposed method, a single-phase half-bridge inverter and a calorimeter are used. By changing switching frequency and modulation index (MI) of the inverter, core loss of the AMCC-320 is measured with the lab-made calorimeter and the results are compared with calculated core loss. The proposed method can be easily extended to other core loss calculation of various converters.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.573-579
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• 2015

A control algorithm of thyristor dual converter power system is proposed in this study for a railway power substation. The thyristor dual converter can use regenerative power without an additional system using control algorithm. An autonomous voltage and mode change method is also proposed to provide uninterrupted power to the railway. A 10 kW reduced model of the thyristor dual converter power system is built and tested to verify the validity of the proposed control algorithm.