Use of qualitative and quantitative models in the supervision of power plant operations

This paper reports on development of a knowledge-based system for supervision of a continuous process that requires, efficient and flexible knowledge structuring and, overall system control, which provides coherence between the diagnosis task (deduction) and the prediction task (simulation). The development of a reasoning method that combines qualitative and quantitative analysis approaches is described. This method is integrated into an overall computational system for a knowledge-based supervisor. The prototype was tested by simulating the transient behavior of the auxiliary feedwater system of a pressurized water reactor. The preliminary results indicate the feasibility of the methods and their potential for industrial applications.