Approximated decoupling control of coupled-core nuclear reactor

An application of approximated decoupling control to a coupled-core nuclear reactor is described, which permits noninteractive regulation of the power level in the individual cores of a reactor that requires to be controlled with account taken of the interference between the cores. The control possesses the advantages of easy design and simple structure of an approximated decoupling controller. The controller is constituted of a precompensator and an output feedback compensator. The control function is ensured with the precompensator playing a key role in approximately diagonalizing an open-loop transfer-function matrix in the frequency range of interest. The precompensator is devised by pseudo-diagonalization, the method being generalized by the authors for application to a wide frequency range. Digital simulations and graphical studies based on the gershgorin band analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the approximated decoupling controller as well as the applicability of the generalized pseudo-diagonalization method. Sample results are compared with those obtained by the decoupling theory. (author)