Fault-tolerant control and diagnostics for large-scale systems

The integration of control design, signal and command validations, and diagnostics is the primary objective of this study. The fault-tolerant control principle consists of parallel control and command validation functions. The parallel control includes a number of control algorithms, each designed to accomplish the same control task using different sets of plant signals. The purpose of command validation is to predict the expected control actions using independent approaches, and to cross-check the control actions. The fault-tolerant control and diagnostics system (FCDS) was demonstrated with application to the regulation of the feedwater system in a four-loop pressurized water reactor (PWR) power plant. Because of a high level of reliability that can be achieved by this tier system for control design approach, this is referred to as a “smart” controller