Development of an engineering simulator for a physical component based nuclear process control test facility

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• 作者：Binggang Cui ; Jin Jiang ; ^{jjiang@eng.uwo.ca}
• 关键词：Engineering simulator ; I&C ; Nuclear process ; Mathematical model ; Matlab/Simulink/Simscape
• 刊名：Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：71
• 期：Complete
• 页码：83-101
• 全文大小：5197 K
• 卷排序：71

文摘

To support research in instrumentation and control (I&C) of a nuclear power plant (NPP), a physical simulator based on scaled version of real plant processes using physical components has been developed, known as a NPP process control test facility (NPCTF). Even though this facility has proved to be a must-have system for any nuclear I&C system research activities, it is not without limitations of its own. Because this facility is made up with physical components, many variables are bounded by their safe operating ranges. This fundamentally limits the applicability of the facility in studying NPP under accident conditions, where excursions of the physical variables, such as pressure, temperature, may suppress the safe limits of the physical components. Furthermore, the facility can only be used for one experiment at a time. Henceforth, an engineering simulator (ES) based on software model, which extends functionalities of the NPCTF to examine accident scenarios and to allow multiple users to run different experiments, ought to be developed. This paper details the development of such a simulator by describing the models for thermal-hydraulic systems in the NPCTF as well as the corresponding NPP processes. The simulator is then implemented in Matlab Simulink environment with the help of Simscape toolbox. The performance of the ES has been validated by comparing the simulation results against those from the experiments on the NPCTF. Some operational scenarios that are not permitted to conduct safely on the NPCTF can now be conveniently carried out in the ES. The paper has demonstrated that the ES indeed plays a complementary role to the NPCTF in the support of I&C research and development for nuclear power plants.