Linear Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Fast Nuclear Reactor

Abstract

Since dynamics of a fast nuclear power reactor is quite nonlinear, uncertain and time-varying. Moreover, the reactor period depends on the neutron lifetime and it has a crucial importance in reactor power so it is necessary to have a control system for the reactor power. A reliable method for power-level control named linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) based on power-level for a fast nuclear power reactor is presented in this paper. The reactor core is simulated based on the point kinetics equations and one delayed neutron group, fast reactor reactivity equation which is very different from thermal reactors and thermal-hydraulics model of the reactor core. This model is completed by calculating initial value of related parameters and system debugging. Finally, it is prove that this model is reasonable and can be used for controlling. The structure of LADRC is very simple and the Bandwidth-Parameterization based controller tuning is easy. It consists of a PD controller and an extended state observer (ESO). Two LADRC systems are designed for power control with model information and without model information respectively. Simulation results show that both the designed controllers have satisfactory performance over the wide range of reactor operating conditions, while LADRC with model information has faster response, less overshoot, better disturbance rejection ability, greater robustness.