Manual control during reactivity transients at the VR-1 reactor – I. Disturbance rejection

Highlights: • A non-linear model structure is fit to manual-control of the VR-1 reactor. • The estimated model is a good fit to experimental data. • The frequency response indicates a good closed-loop control system performance. • The output non-linearity shows potential evidence of operator performance. - Abstract: The description of human operator dynamic characteristics in mathematical terms compatible with control engineering practice is an essential prerequisite to the analytical treatment of manual reactor control systems. Safe reactor operation requires effective operator control through interaction with plant dynamics, manipulators and displays. Traditional static analysis methods consider only specific situations; they fail to adequately explain the mutual interactions between the operator and the reactor plant characteristics. In this paper we investigate the cause-and-effect behaviours of three VR-1 research reactor operators during reactivity disturbance experiments, based on the methods of conventional control engineering techniques. The primary purpose of experiments carried out at the VR-1 training reactor and reported in this paper is the validation of a quasi-linear cause-and-effect operator model.