The aim of this work is to present a digital implementation of a water level controller for a pressurized water reactor (PWR) using FPGA architectures. The application of FPGA is widely diffused in the conventional industry, whereas some issues have to be solved for a direct use of this architecture in the nuclear field. Possible advantages and limitations of using an advanced, digital hardware-based controller on a pressurized water reactor are here considered. The water level controller has been modeled as a feedback linearizing controller with a PI action and sliding mode estimator. The digital implementation consisted of several phases: a discrete-time, floating-point version converted to a fixed-point one; a conversion of the controller into the hardware description language (VHDL), and the synthesis for the FPGA; a final connection of the controller in the SimulinkR model to the actual hardware. The feasibility of such an approach has been shown, and the results have been validated against a PWR model using the hardware-in-the-loop technique.

Water level controller for a pressurized water reactor: Digital implementation on FPGA

Cappelli, M.;
2019-01-01

Abstract

The aim of this work is to present a digital implementation of a water level controller for a pressurized water reactor (PWR) using FPGA architectures. The application of FPGA is widely diffused in the conventional industry, whereas some issues have to be solved for a direct use of this architecture in the nuclear field. Possible advantages and limitations of using an advanced, digital hardware-based controller on a pressurized water reactor are here considered. The water level controller has been modeled as a feedback linearizing controller with a PI action and sliding mode estimator. The digital implementation consisted of several phases: a discrete-time, floating-point version converted to a fixed-point one; a conversion of the controller into the hardware description language (VHDL), and the synthesis for the FPGA; a final connection of the controller in the SimulinkR model to the actual hardware. The feasibility of such an approach has been shown, and the results have been validated against a PWR model using the hardware-in-the-loop technique.
2019
978-488898305-1
Digital control, FPGA, I&C, PWR, Sensors
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12079/54285
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