Approximated Decoupling Control of Coupled-Core Nuclear Reactor

Abstract

An application of approximated decoupling control to a coupled-core nuclear reactor is described, which permits noninteractive regulation of the power level in the individual cores of a reactor that requires to be controlled with account taken of the interference between the cores. The control possesses the advantages of easy design and simple struc-ture of an approximated decoupling controller.
The controller is constituted of a precompensator and an output feedback compensator. The control function is ensured with the precompensator playing a key role in approxi-mately diagonalizing an open-loop transfer-function matrix in the frequency range of interest. The precompensator is devised by pseudo-diagonalization, the method being generalized by the authors for application to a wide frequency range.
Digital simulations and graphical studies based on the Gershgorin band analysis demon-strate the effectiveness of the approximated decoupling controller as well as the applicability of the generalized pseudo-diagonalization method. Sample results are compared with those obtained by the decoupling theory.