Partially modal projective control of a nuclear power plant

In this paper recent results for designing optimal state feedback modal controllers by appropriate selection of weights in linear quadratic regulator (LQR) theory are presented. The approach is then extended to those cases where the controller is constrained to be of output feedback type. For such situations a suboptimal projective controller is proposed, and the eigenstructure of the system under the state feedback controller is used as a reference structure to arrive at this (projective) controller. This controller is shown to be capable of retaining an invariant subspace of the reference eigenspace. The results are then used for control of the pressurized water reactor (PWR) in the H.B. Robinson nuclear power plant. It is further shown that the design algorithm is very simple in terms of its computational complexity