Nonlinear dynamic output-feedback power-level control for PWRs: A shifted-ectropy based design approach

Nuclear fission energy is currently the sole energy that can substitute fossil in a centralized way and great amount with commercial availability and economic competitiveness. Power-level control is one of the key techniques which provide safe, stable and efficient operation for nuclear power plants. The physically-based regulation theory is definitely a promising trend of modern control theory, which can provide a control design method that suppresses the unstable part of the system dynamics and remains the stable part. Usually, control laws designed by the physically-based control theory have a simple form and high performance. Stimulated by this, a novel nonlinear dynamic output feedback power-level control law is established in this paper for the pressurized water nuclear reactors (PWRs) based upon its natural dynamic features. This newly-developed controller guarantees not only the globally asymptotic closed-loop stability but also the satisfactory transient performance through properly adjusting the feedback gains. Furthermore, this controller has the L-2 disturbance attenuation performance. Numerical simulation results not only verify the correctness of the theoretical results but also illustrate the high control performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.