Design of a two-degree-of-freedom controller for nuclear reactor power control of pressurized water reactor

The objective of this investigation is to design a two-degree-of-freedom controller for the nuclear reactor power control system that provides good control performance in the power range between 10 and 100 percent of rated power. In this paper, based on analysis of the effect of change in the model parameters on pole sensitivity analysis of a 5th-order transfer model that is linearized from a nonlinear core model with one-group delayed neutron, the power level in linear model is confirmed as the key parameter. To reduce the effect of power level variation on the system dynamics, a two-degree-of-freedom controller is proposed and two analytical design methods are derived. The simulations based on a 10th- order nonlinear reactor core model show good control performance and robustness of the nuclear reactor power control system with a two-degree-of-freedom controller. It is also demonstrated that the proposed parameter-tuning methods are effective to design the controller. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.