The Role of Simulation in Control System Design/Modification

Abstract

Due to the discrepancy between design and actual plant data, controller tuning is required during power test of new plant. Furthermore, after a period of operation time, the aging effect of the sensors and components will cause the system performance to change. And with the improvement of control system hardware, better control algorithm can be implemented to assure the safety of the system operation. Control system tuning/modification is necessary to keep the system at its best performance. So, it is not once in a system life time job.

Simulation play an important role in control system design and modification. Because the reactor itself has a very restricted operation regulation, we can’t afford to modify/tune the control system by applying the “trial-and-error”method directly on actual power plant. Instead, physical plant is modeled in terms of set of mathematical equations in advance. The control system design and analysis are performed by computer simulation.

Besides the computer simulation, we can also verify and try the newly developed algorithm on experimental reactor system. The Taiwan Research Reactor power regulating system modification work is taken as an example to demonstrate the role of simulation. In this work, the model of Taiwan Research Reactor and its power regulating system were setup and analyzed by simulation. Parameter optimization and tuning map technique is applied to optimize the control system performance. Analysis results will be verified on Taiwan Research Reactor. These procedures can also be applied to commercial nuclear power plants.