• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.625-636
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• 2013

Pressing demands of economic competitiveness, the need for large-scale deployment, minimizing the need of human intervention, and experience from the past events and incidents at operating reactors have guided the evolution and innovations in reactor technologies. Indian innovative reactor 'AHWR' is a pressure-tube type natural circulation based boiling water reactor that is designed to meet such requirements, which essentially reflect the needs of next generation reactors. The reactor employs various passive features to prevent and mitigate accidental conditions, like a slightly negative void reactivity coefficient, passive poison injection to scram the reactor in event of failure of the wired shutdown systems, a large elevated pool of water as a heat sink inside the containment, passive decay heat removal based on natural circulation and passive valves, passive ECC injection, etc. It is designed to meet the fundamental safety requirements of safe shutdown, safe decay heat removal and confinement of activity with no impact in public domain, and hence, no need for emergency planning under all conceivable scenarios. This paper examines the role of the various passive safety systems in prevention and mitigation of severe plant conditions that may arise in event of multiple failures. For the purpose of demonstration of the effectiveness of its passive features, postulated scenarios on the lines of three major severe accidents in the history of nuclear power reactors are considered, namely; the Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Severe plant conditions along the lines of these scenarios are postulated to the extent conceivable in the reactor under consideration and analyzed using best estimate system thermal-hydraulics code RELAP5/Mod3.2. It is found that the various passive systems incorporated enable the reactor to tolerate the postulated accident conditions without causing severe plant conditions and core degradation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.443-458
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• 2011

An extensive numerical investigation on the magnetorheological (MR) damper-based smart passive control system for mitigating vibration of stay cables under wind loads has been conducted. The smart passive system is incorporated with an electromagnetic induction (EMI) device for reducing complexity of the conventional MR damper based semi-active control system by eliminating an external power supply part and a feedback control part (i.e., sensors and controller). In this study, the control performance of the smart passive system has been evaluated by using a cable structure model extracted from a full-scale long stay cable with high tension. Numerical simulation results of the proposed smart damping system are compared with those of the passive and semi-active control systems employing MR dampers. It is demonstrated from the results that the control performance of the smart passive control system is better than those of the passive control cases and comparable to those of the semi-active control systems in the forced vibration analysis as well as the free vibration analysis, even though there is no external power source in the smart passive system.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.200-207
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• 2007

The passive direction finding cross localization method is widely adopted in passive tracking, therefore there will exist masses of false intersection points. Eliminating these false intersection points correctly and quickly is a key technique in passive localization. A new method is proposed for passive locating and tracking multi-jammer target in this paper. It not only solves the difficulty of determining the number of targets when masses of false intersection points existing, but also solves the initialization problem of elastic network. Thus this method solves the problem of multi-jammer target correlation and the elimination of static false intersection points. The method which dynamically establishes multiple hypothesis trajectory trees solves the problem of eliminating the remaining false intersection points. Simulation results show that computational burden of the method is lower, the elastic network can more quickly find all or most of the targets and have a more probability of locking the real targets. This method can eliminate more false intersection points.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.741-757
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• 2008

The research field of structural control has evolved from the development of passive devices since 1970s, through the intensive investigation on active systems in 1980s, to the recent studies of semi-active control systems in 1990s. Currently semi-active control is considered most promising in civil engineering applications. However, actual implementation of semi-active devices is still limited due mainly to their system maintenance and associated long-term reliability as a result of power requirement. In this paper, the concept of functionally upgraded passive devices is introduced to streamline some of the state-of-the-art researches and guide the development of new passive devices that can mimic the function of their corresponding semi-active control devices for various applications. The general characteristics of this special group of passive devices are discussed and representative examples are summarized. Their superior performances are illustrated with cyclic and shake table tests of two example devices: mass-variable tuned liquid damper and friction-pendulum bearing with a variable sliding surface curvature.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.33 no.8A
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• pp.805-814
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• 2008

Both EPCglobal Generation-2 (Gen2) for passive RFID systems and Intelleflex for semi-passive RFID systems use probabilistic slotted ALOHA with Q algorithm, which is a kind of dynamic framed slotted ALOHA (DFSA), as the tag anti-collision algorithm. A better tag anti-collision algorithm can reduce collisions so as to increase the efficiency of tag identification. In this paper, we introduce and analyze the estimation methods of the number of slots and tags for DFSA. To increase the efficiency of tag identification, we propose two new tag anti-collision algorithms, which are Chebyshev's inequality (CHI) algorithm and hybrid Q algorithm, and compare them with the conventional Q algorithm and adaptive adjustable framed Q (AAFQ) algorithm, which is mentioned in Part I. The simulation results show that AAFQ performs the best in Gen2 scenario. However, in Intelleflex scenario the proposed hybrid Q algorithm is the best. That is, hybrid Q provides the minimum identification time, shows the more consistent collision ratio, and maximizes throughput and system efficiency in Intelleflex scenario.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2019

Thermal-hydraulic passive safety systems (PSSs) are incorporated into many advanced reactor designs on the bases of simplicity, economics and inherent safety nature. Several factors among which are the critical parameters (CPs) that influence failure and reliability of thermal-hydraulic (t-h) passive systems are now being explored. For simplicity, it is assumed in most reliability analyses that the CPs are independent whereas in practice this assumption is not always valid. There is need to critically examine the dependency influence of the CPs on reliability of the t-h passive systems at design stage and in operation to guarantee safety/better performance. In this paper, two multivariate analysis methods (covariance and conditional subjective probability density function) were presented and applied to a simple PSS. The methods followed a generalized procedure for evaluating t-h reliability based on dependency consideration. A passively water-cooled steam generator was used to demonstrate the dependency of the identified key CPs using the methods. The results obtained from the methods are in agreement and justified the need to consider the dependency of CPs in t-h reliability. For dependable t-h reliability, it is advisable to adopt all possible CPs and apply suitable multivariate method in dependency consideration of CPs among other factors.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.4
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• pp.417-434
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• 2022

In this work, a review of mechanical metamaterials and seismic protection systems that use them is carried out, focusing on passive protection systems. During the last years, a wide variety of classical systems of seismic protection have demonstrated to be an effective and practical way of reducing the seismic vulnerability of buildings, maintaining their health and structural integrity. However, with the emergence of metamaterials, which allow obtaining uncommon mechanical properties, new procedures and devices with high performance have been developed, reducing the seismic risk through novel approaches such as: seismic shields and the redirection of seismic waves; the use of stop band gaps and the construction of buried mass resonators; the design of pentamodal base isolators. These ideas are impacting traditional areas of structural engineering such as the design and building of highly efficient base isolation systems. In this work, recent advances in new seismic protection technologies and researches that integrate mechanical metamaterials are presented. A complete bibliometric analysis was carried out to identify and classify relevant authors and works related with passive seismic protection system based on mechanical metamaterial (pSPSmMMs). Finally, possible future scenarios for study and development of seismic isolators based on mechanical metamaterials are shown, identifying the relevant topics that have not yet been explored, as well as those with the greatest potential for future application.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.22-28
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• 2010

This study analyzed the performance of passive solar system for office building. A unit model of the passive solar system was proposed in order to predict its performance under varying parameters and Seoul weather date. Steady state heat transfer equations were set up using a energy balanced equations and solved using a inverse matrix method. Numerical simulation program to analyze system was developed by using MATLAB. As the results, the passive solar system performance of office building was determined by the insolation and the outdoor air temperature. Also the passive solar system indicate 6.7~16.2% of annual average efficiency. In the comparison with other systems of the conventional wall, mass wall could reduce the heating loads of 7.1% and trombe wall could reduce heating loads of 11.5%. Through this study, performance of passive solar system for office building was verified by numerical method. Consequently, the passive solar system could operate an important role as the alternative for saving energy consumption of office building, and the additional studies should be made through the experimental method for the commercialization.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1909-1914
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• 2004

Passive velocity field control (PVFC) was previously developed for fully mechanical systems, in which the motion task was specified behaviorally in terms of a velocity field, and the closed-loop was passive with respect to a supply rate given by the environment input. However the PVFC was only applied to a single manipulator, the proposed control law was derived geometrically, and the geometric and robustness properties of the closed-loop system were also analyzed. In this paper, we propose a method to apply a decentralized control algorithm to cooperative 3-wheeled mobile robots whose subsystem is under nonholonomic constraints and which convey a common rigid object in a horizontal plain. Moreover it is shown that multiple robot systems ensure stability and the velocities of augmented systems convergence to a scaled multiple of each desired velocity field for cooperative mobile robot systems.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.803-811
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• 2024

Nuclear accidents such as Fukushima Daiichi have highlighted the potential of passive safety systems to replace or complement active safety systems as part of the overall prevention and/or mitigation strategies. In addition, passive systems are key features of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), for which they are becoming almost unavoidable and are part of the basic design of many reactors available in today's nuclear market. Nevertheless, their potential to significantly increase the safety of nuclear power plants still needs to be strengthened, in particular the ability of computer codes to determine their performance and reliability in industrial applications and support the safety demonstration. The PASTELS project (September 2020-February 2024), funded by the European Commission "Euratom H2020" programme, is devoted to the study of passive systems relying on natural circulation. The project focuses on two types, namely the SAfety COndenser (SACO) for the evacuation of the core residual power and the Containment Wall Condenser (CWC) for the reduction of heat and pressure in the containment vessel in case of accident. A specific design for each of these systems is being investigated in the project. Firstly, a straight vertical pool type of SACO has been implemented on the Framatome's PKL loop at Erlangen. It represents a tube bundle type heat exchanger that transfers heat from the secondary circuit to the water pool in which it is immersed by condensing the vapour generated in the steam generator. Secondly, the project relies on the CWC installed on the PASI test loop at LUT University in Finland. This facility reproduces the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of a Passive Containment Cooling System (PCCS) mainly composed of a CWC, a heat exchanger in the containment vessel connected to a water tank at atmospheric pressure outside the vessel which represents the ultimate heat sink. Several activities are carried out within the framework of the project. Different tests are conducted on these integral test facilities to produce new and relevant experimental data allowing to better characterize the physical behaviours and the performances of these systems for various thermo-hydraulic conditions. These test programmes are simulated by different codes acting at different scales, mainly system and CFD codes. New "system/CFD" coupling approaches are also considered to evaluate their potential to benefit both from the accuracy of CFD in regions where local 3D effects are dominant and system codes whose computational speed, robustness and general level of physical validation are particularly appreciated in industrial studies. In parallel, the project includes the study of single and two-phase natural circulation loops through a bibliographical study and the simulations of the PERSEO and HERO-2 experimental facilities. After a synthetic presentation of the project and its objectives, this article provides the reader with findings related to the physical analysis of the test results obtained on the PKL and PASI installations as well an overall evaluation of the capability of the different numerical tools to simulate passive systems.