Design of Temperature Controller for Irradiation Experiment in Nuclear Reactor

Abstract

Indian nuclear research reactors provide facilities to carry out irradiation experiments on the core structural materials to assess the radiation damage in these materials. The radiation damage in the material strongly depends on the temperature of irradiation. The temperature-controlled instrumented irradiation capsule (TCIIC) is a device which facilitates irradiation of specimens at a constant higher temperature in a reactor. This paper discusses design of PID controller to establish a constant temperature in the TCIIC system. The control parameters are estimated through placement of dominant pole-zero in the “S-plane” and a stable region of the PID controller parameters was defined. The time response result from the proposed method has been compared with other well-known PID controller design methods and also verified experimentally. The proposed method shows that the controller parameters can provide a stable and reliable performance of temperature control needed in the irradiation experiment.

KEYWORDS:

• Irradiation capsule
• Temperature controller
• Time delay
• PID
• Root-locus
• Pole-zero placement

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first author acknowledges DAE for research fellowship. The authors gratefully acknowledge Mr Joel Jose, IGCAR for his review and valuable suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suman Saurav

Suman Saurav obtained his MTech in nuclear engineering. He is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in engineering science at HBNI, Mumbai, India. His thesis focuses on the design and development of instrument irradiation sensors and devices for the nuclear reactor applications. Email: [email protected]

P. K. Chaurasia

P K Chaurasia has been working as scientific officer in RIMM Division of IGCAR, Kalpakkam, India. He joined IGCAR in the year 1998. His area of research includes conventional and non-conventional machining, welding of mild steel and stainless steel and development of instrumented irradiation devices.

S. Murugan

S Murugan is with Fast Reactor Technology Group of IGCAR. His areas of interest are irradiation experiments, numerical modelling in welding, residual stress analysis, precision machining and fabrication, robotics and remote tooling, in-service inspection, and fast reactor engineering development. Email: [email protected]