A Novel Approach for Optimal Control of A Pressurized Water Reactor

A novel approach for optimal control of the H. B. Robinson nuclear power plant is presented. Optimal linear quadratic regulator (LQR) theory is used for the control purpose. The appealing feature of the LQR design used here over the previous applications of this technique to nuclear reactors is that the proposed controller design algorithm for the reactor is capable of selecting appropriate weighting matrices in the cost functional, so that all or a selected number of the open-loop system poles are placed at desired locations while the performance index is minimized, another advantage of the approach is that since aggregation is used in designing such a controller, second- or fourth-order matrix computations are performed almost throughout the design procedure. © 1989 IEE