Disturbance observer based adaptive sliding mode control for power tracking of PWRs

It is well known that the model of nuclear reactors features natural nonlinearity, and variable parameters during power tracking operation. In this paper, a disturbance observer-based adaptive sliding mode control (DOB-ASMC) strategy is proposed for power tracking of the pressurized-water reactor (PWR) in the presence of lumped disturbances. The nuclear reactor model is firstly established based on point-reactor kinetics equations with six delayed neutron groups. Then, a new sliding mode disturbance observer is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance, and its stability is discussed. On the basis of the developed DOB, an adaptive sliding mode control scheme is proposed, which is a combination of backstepping technique and integral sliding mode control approach. In addition, an adaptive law is introduced to enhance the robustness of a PWR with disturbances. The asymptotic stability of the overall control system is verified by Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed DOB-ASMC strategy has better power tracking performance than conventional sliding mode controller and PID control method as well as conventional backstepping controller.