The Information Security of Digital Control Systems for Nuclear Power Plants

The NPP （nuclear power plant） being vital objects of an energy infrastructure must be protected against malicious actions affecting their safety, and cyber security plays a key part in attaining this goal. The paper considers, implemented by the authors within the project of advanced digital control system for NPP with the reactor VVER-1000, a system of unauthorized access protection, partially built up on the technology of AA （active audit） and expert system. The AA technology is based on response of the system on deviation of current signature of the automated process control system from stable state rather than on a certain signature of attack and relies on the estimation of the behavioral models of the particular digital control system. The advent of active audit reflects the current situation in the digital control systems where complex distributed platforms are used to construct automated process control system. The active audit allows one to make the digital control system functionally closed, provided that it is determinate. The methodology of the active audit does not give u external （barrier） and traditional （password, antivirus） methods of unauthorized access protection. These methods can be used when it is appropriate to achieve a required protection level.

A Novel Computerized Water Level Control System of PWR Steam Generator of Nuclear Power Plant

This paper presents a novel method to solve old problem of water level control system of pressurized water reactor (PWR) steam generator (SG) of nuclear power plant (NPP) .The level control system of SG plays an important role which effects the reliablity,safty,cost of SG and its mathematical models have been solved.A model of the conventional controller is presented and the existing problems are discussed. A novel rule based realtime control technique is designed with a computerized water level control (CWLC) system for SG of PWR NPP.The performance of this is evaluated for full power reactor operating conditions by applying different transient conditions of SG′s data of Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant (QNPP).

Advanced Coordinating Control System for Power Plant

The coordinating control system is popular used in power plant.This paper describes the advanced coordinating control by control methods and optimal operation,introduces their principals and features by using the examples of power plant op- eration.It is wealthy for automation application in optimal power plant operation.

Corrosion in Control Systems Decrease the Lifetime of the Electronic Devices of the Industrial Plants of Mexicali,BC,Mexico

The principal factor to determine the economical value of the products manufactured in the electronics industry is due to the productive yielding. This is important for the cost of the articles fabricated in this type of industrial plants installed in Mexicali city, where around 80% of companies are, and which fabricate electronic devices and systems, or have industrial electronic systems and machines to their manufacturing process. Mexicalicity is located in theBaja CaliforniaStateof the northwest ofMexico, which is a border city with Calexico in theCaliforniaStateof the United States of America (USA). The region located in Mexicali, is a desert area. Geothermal plant is located in this area, which is an important industry and supplies electricity to this city and its valleys and some cities on southwest of United States for daily activities. This company emits hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as a main air pollutant that reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere, generating sulfur oxides (SOX). This chemical is dispersed to the city of Mexicali in which industrial plants are located with electronic control systems, and penetrates to indoor rooms. Those cause the corrosion process. The presence of corrosion leads to the deterioration of electrical connectors, the connections of electronic systems and the decreasing of the lifetime of these control systems. Other air pollutants that are considered as chemical agents which cause damage to materials used in the electronics industry, are the sulfurs and nitrogen oxides (NOX), emitted from the traffic vehicle and some industries. This causes the low productive yielding of electrical and electronic devices and systems used in the companies of this city, and is a major concern to specialized people, managers and owners. To analyze the productive yielding of electronic devices and systems installed in indoor of the electronics industry. For this reason, to know the principal causes of it, a study in three industrial plants, to determine the grade level of deterioration of the electronic control systems (ECS) used in the electronics industry of this city was made. The results showed that at major air pollution concentration detected by specialized methods, the lifetime of the ECS was decreased by the generation of corrosion in their electrical connectors and connections. This was caused for the levels of air pollutants mentioned above, than exceed the air quality standards in some periods of the year, added with the levels upper of relative humidity levels (RH) and temperatures of 85% and 25°C in winter and 80% 35°C in summer, being a main factor of this electrochemical phenomenon.

Stability of singular networked control systems with control constraint

Based on bounded network-induced time-delay, the networked control system is modeled as a linear time-variant singular system. Using the Lyapunov theory and the linear matrix inequality approach, the criteria for delay-independent stability and delay-dependent stability of singular networked control systems are derived and transformed to a feasibility problem of linear matrix inequality formulation, which can be solved by the Matlab LMI toolbox, and the feasible solutions provide the maximum allowable delay bound that makes the system stable. A numerical example is provided, which shows that the analysis method is valid and the stability criteria are feasible.

Performance Analysis of Automated Control System for Condenser Water Treatment Unit

The air conditioning system in the Umm Al-Qura University (Albdiya Campus) was conceived to be a district cooling by a remote chilled water plant. Recently, there are two chilled water plants in the university installed strategically to provide chilled water to all the academic and administrative buildings of the university through distribution network with total capacity approximately of 12,000 tons of refrigeration. The plants were built based on cooling towers with open water cycle as heat rejection system. Water treatment chemicals has been used to protect the cooling systems from corrosion, scaling and microbiological fouling accompanied with dissolved and suspended water impurities. Different methods are being used to determine and control the treatment chemical concentrations and system performance indicators. Traditional chemical controller has drawback of indirect measurements and set points. The purpose of this paper is to present a solution to overcome the problems of traditional and conventional chemical treatment and control sys-tems. Central cooling plant number (1) assigned to perform experimental setup using new chemical treatment technology. Advanced automatic chemical treatment controller installed on condensers (1, 2 and 3), and certain key performance indicators were selected and monitored such as chemical and water consumption, power, energy saving, and maintaining system integrity and efficiency. Satisfactory results were obtained in terms of performance and cost of operation.

Proposal of Cooperative Communication to Enhance Accuracy of Wireless Control Systems

Control systems are being changed from wired to wireless communications because of flexibility, mobility and extensibility of wireless communication systems;however the reliability of wireless communications is suspected. In this paper, we propose cooperative communication scheme for wireless control systems which consist of a controller and multiple machines;these machines cooperatively work in a group and for the same duty. In the proposed method, the controller can communicate with machines directly or via other machines, whereas in the conventional method, the controller only communicates with machines directly. The simple 2-link arm plant is used to evaluate our proposed system, and the simulation results indicate that the proposed method is more accurate, and more stable than the conventional method.

Modeling and simulation of temperature control system in plant factory using energy balance

Closed production systems,such as plant factories and vertical farms,have emerged to ensure a sustainable supply of fresh food,to cope with the increasing consumption of natural resource for the growing population.In a plant factory,a microclimate model is one of the direct control components of a whole system.In order to better realize the dynamic regulation for the microclimate model,energy-saving and consumption reduction,it is necessary to optimize the environmental parameters in the plant factory,and thereby to determine the influencing factors of atmosphere control systems.Therefore,this study aims to identify accurate microclimate models,and further to predict temperature change based on the experimental data,using the classification and regression trees(CART)algorithm.A random forest theory was used to represent the temperature control system.A mechanism model of the temperature control system was proposed to improve the performance of the plant factories.In terms of energy efficiency,the main influencing factors on temperature change in the plant factories were obtained,including the temperature and air volume flow of the temperature control device,as well as the internal relative humidity.The generalization error of the prediction model can reach 0.0907.The results demonstrated that the proposed model can present the quantitative relationship and prediction function.This study can provide a reference for the design of high-precision environmental control systems in plant factories.

Design and development of expert system for controlling sintering process

The general structure of expert system for controlling sintering process has been proposed. It includes knowledge base, inference engine, data acquisition system, learning system, knowledge base management system, explanation system and so on. The control functions consist of sintering chemical composition control centered on basicity and sintering process state control centered on permeability. The adaptive prediction of sintering chemical composition, the control strategy centered on basicity, the control strategy centered on permeability, the judgement of permeability and the prediction of burn through point were studied. The software of system, which includes about 1 000 expert rules, was successfully applied in off line control of sintering process in a sintering plant.

Intelligent Control and Maintenance Man-agement Integrated System Based on Multi-Agents for Coal-Preparation Plant

This paper discusses the progress of computer integrated processing （CIPS） of coal-preparation and then preserits an intelligence controlled production-process, device-maintenance and production-management system of coal- preparation based on multi-agents （IICMMS-CP）. The construction of the IICMMS-CP, the distributed network control system based on live intelligence control stations and the strategy of implementing distributed intelligence control system are studied in order to overcome the disadvantages brought about by the wide use of the PLC system by coaipreparation plants. The software frame, based on a Multi-Agent Intelligence Control and Maintenance Management integrated system, is studied and the implemention methods of IICMMS-CP are discussed. The characteristics of distributed architecture, cooperation and parallel computing meet the needs of integrated control of coal-preparation plants with large-scale spatial production distribution, densely-related processes and complex systems. Its application further improves the reliability and precision of process control, accuracy of fault identification and intelligence of production adjustment, establishes a technical basis for system integration and flexible production. The main function of the system has been tested in a coal-preparation plant to good effect in stabilizing product quality, improving efficiency and reducing consumption.

Fractional Gradient Descent RBFNN for Active Fault-Tolerant Control of Plant Protection UAVs

With the increasing prevalence of high-order systems in engineering applications, these systems often exhibitsignificant disturbances and can be challenging to model accurately. As a result, the active disturbance rejectioncontroller (ADRC) has been widely applied in various fields. However, in controlling plant protection unmannedaerial vehicles (UAVs), which are typically large and subject to significant disturbances, load disturbances andthe possibility of multiple actuator faults during pesticide spraying pose significant challenges. To address theseissues, this paper proposes a novel fault-tolerant control method that combines a radial basis function neuralnetwork (RBFNN) with a second-order ADRC and leverages a fractional gradient descent (FGD) algorithm.We integrate the plant protection UAV model’s uncertain parameters, load disturbance parameters, and actuatorfault parameters and utilize the RBFNN for system parameter identification. The resulting ADRC exhibits loaddisturbance suppression and fault tolerance capabilities, and our proposed active fault-tolerant control law hasLyapunov stability implications. Experimental results obtained using a multi-rotor fault-tolerant test platformdemonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other control strategies regarding load disturbance suppressionand fault-tolerant performance.

EXPERT SYSTEM FOR CONTROLLING THE STATE OF SINTERING PROCESS

In order to control sintering process,improve permeability and stabilize burn through point, a control scheme which combines thermal state with permeability state is proposed, and an expert system for controlling sintering process state is developed, the software which includes about 1000 expert rules is successfully applied to off line control of sintering process.

Integrated Automation of Power Plant Electrical System

Aiming at the comparatively laggard level of power plant electrical system automation, this paper analyzes the feasibility,necessity and some key points of the application of integrated automation technology to power plant electrical system. New idea using fieldbus control system technology is presented. This paper also gives the outline and detailed schemes.

Distributed Model Predictive Control for Networked Plant-wide Systems With Neighborhood Cooperation

For large-scale networked plant-wide systems composed by physically(or geographically) divided subsystems, only limited information is available for local controllers on account of region and communication restrictions. Concerning the optimal control problem of such subsystems, a neighbor-based distributed model predictive control(NDMPC) strategy is presented to improve the global system performance. In this scheme, the performance index of local subsystems and that of its neighbors are minimized together in the determination of the optimal control input, which makes the local control decision also beneficial to its neighboring subsystems and further contributes to improving the convergence and control performance of overall system.The stability of the closed-loop system is proved. Moreover, the parameter designing method for distributed synthesis is provided.Finally, the simulation results illustrate the main characteristics and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

A parameter optimization approach to robust PI-controller design for systems with interval plants

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic way for designing optimal PI-controllers for the interval plant family. Optimality means that the coefficient intervals of the plant stabilized by a PI-controller is maximized. It will be shown that the optimization problem can be formulated in terms of an eigenvalue minimization problem of matrix pairs of the form （H（h0, g0）, H（δ1,k, δ2,k））, where k= 1, 2, 3, 4 and both H（h0, g0） and H（δ1,k,δ2,k） are frequency independent Hurwitz-like matrices. A numerical example is provided to illustrate that optimal controller parameters can be successfully obtained by a two-dimensional search.

Self-Tuning Control Techniques for Wind Turbine and Hydroelectric Plant Systems

The interest on the use of renewable energy resources is increasing, especially towards wind and hydro powers, which should be efficiently converted into electric energy via suitable technology tools. To this aim, self-tuning control techniques represent viable strategies that can be employed for this purpose, due to the features of these nonlinear dynamic processes working over a wide range of operating conditions, driven by stochastic inputs, excitations and disturbances. Some of the considered methods were already verified on wind turbine systems, and important advantages may thus derive from the appropriate implementation of the same control schemes for hydroelectric plants. This represents the key point of the work, which provides some guidelines on the design and the application of these control strategies to these energy conversion systems. In fact, it seems that investigations related with both wind and hydraulic energies present a reduced number of common aspects, thus leading to little exchange and share of possible common points. This consideration is particularly valid with reference to the more established wind area when compared to hydroelectric systems. In this way, this work recalls the models of wind turbine and hydroelectric system, and investigates the application of different control solutions. Another important point of this investigation regards the analysis of the exploited benchmark models, their control objectives, and the development of the control solutions. The working conditions of these energy conversion systems will also be taken into account in order to highlight the reliability and robustness characteristics of the developed control strategies, especially interesting for remote and relatively inaccessible location of many installations.

Optimal robust control for linear feedback systems in the presence of plant uncertainty

This paper has investigated how the optimization methods can be used to deal with plant uncertainty in linear feedback control design. Firstly, we define a weighted sensitivity error function based on robust redesign. Then, by modifying the nominal controller to minimize the variance of the actual system performanee from the desired performance over the whole frequency range, we obtain an optimal robust design method for a class of stochastic model errors. Moreover, the result can be used to give a good prediction to the achievable average tracking performance and control energy for practical system designs. The validity of obtained results can be illustrated by the simulation research.

Gas-phase and particle-phase PCDD/F congener distributions in the flue gas from an iron ore sintering plant

The activated carbon injection-circulating fluidized bed（ACI-CFB）-bag filter coupling technique was studied in an iron ore sintering plant. For comparison, the removal efficiencies under the conditions without or with ACI technology were both evaluated. It was found that the polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofuran（PCDD/F） removal efficiency for total international toxic equivalence quantity（I-TEQ） concentration was improved from 91.61% to 97.36% when ACI was employed, revealing that ACI was very conducive to further controlling the PCDD/F emissions. Detailed congener distributions of PCDD/Fs in the gas-phase and particle-phase of the Inlet and Outlet samples were determined. Additionally, the PCDD/F distribution for the Fly ash-with ACI sample of was also studied.

Fractional Order Modeling of Human Operator Behavior with Second Order Controlled Plant and Experiment Research

Modeling human operator's dynamics plays a very important role in the manual closed-loop control system, and it is an active research area for several decades. Based on the characteristics of human brain and behavior, a new kind of fractional order mathematical model for human operator in single-input single-output (SISO) systems is proposed. Compared with the traditional models based on the commonly used quasilinear transfer function method or the optimal control theory method, the proposed fractional order model has simpler structure with only few parameters, and each parameter has explicit physical meanings. The actual data and experiment results with the second-order controlled plant illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 2014 Chinese Association of Automation.

The Control Efficiency of Plant Alcohol Extracts on the Laboratory Populations of Myzus persicae(Sulzer)and Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach)

The effects of semiochemicals extracted from 63 species of plants, on peach aphid (Myzus per-sicae) and mustard aphid (Lipaphis erysimi), were studied in laboratory. The deterrent rate, reproduction deterrent index and the interferential index of population control (IIPC) was used to evaluate the efficiency of semiochemicals on population control of the two target aphids. The results showed that the extracts of 34 species of common plants have noticeable effect on both aphid populations, especially, Xanthium sibiricum Petr. Et Widd. and Syngonium podophyllum Schott. These plant extracts could be used to construct the plant pro-tectant to protect crops.