Fractional order IMC-PID controller design for the pressurized heavy water reactor

A pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) is a nuclear power reactor,that commonly uses unenriched natural uranium as its fuel and heavy water as its coolant and moderator. The PHWR has become an important component of the present day power generation industry. Working of a PHWR may often require reduction of nuclear power within a small finite time interval in accordance to the varying load conditions. This phenomenon is referred to as step back condition. Therefore, for the efficient working of the PHWR it is very important to have a control algorithm that has the capability to handle the step back condition very precisely. The fractional order control strategy has emerged as one of the very versatile and accurate control strategies in the recent times. The fractional order PID (FOPID) controllers are known to give very robust performance both in nominal as well as varying operating conditions. However, most of the design techniques available for the FOPID controllers are mathematically very lengthy and complex. Therefore, in this paper an FOPID controller design technique has been suggested using the concept of internal model control (IMCFOPID) for the PHWR under step back conditions. Further, the performance of the proposed controller has been compared with the conventional FOPID controller using the various integral error criterions. The proposed IMC-FOPID controller is found to give an improved performance as compared to the conventional FOPID controller.