On the Multivariable Control of Nuclear Reactors Using the State Feedback Approach

Recently an effort was made to design nuclear reactor systems via state-variable feedback techniques. On the other hand, a great amount of research has been concentrated on the multivariable state feedback control methodology, for its own, and a variety of useful results have been derived. The purpose of the paper is to apply a general multivariable state feedback control technique to nuclear reactor systems (e.g. multiregion reactors, coupled core reactors, etc.). Two fundamental design tasks are considered, namely, noninteraction and realization of desired transfer functions. This technique requires the system under control to be given in its phase canonical form and provides explicit expressions for the feedback control law matrices required. Two nuclear reactor examples are considered and fully worked out.