Optimal control of a boiling water nuclear reactor

Abstract

Application of optimal control to a boiling water nuclear reactor is the theme of this paper. The optimal control problem of a linearized model of a reactor is treated as a regulator problem and feedback control laws are derived to drive the system to steady state in the presence of disturbances. The weighting matrices in the performance index of the regulator problem are suitably changed to yield acceptable closed-loop responses for specific disturbances. The disturbances considered are (i) impulse change in temperature of water at inlet to plenum chamber and (ii) step change in throttle valve area. Then the feedback control laws are implemented on the nonlinear model to illustrate their effectiveness both for large and small disturbances.