Internal model control based proportional-integral controller with class topper optimization for power control of molten salt breeder reactor core

Abstract Internal model control (IMC) method is based on mathematical process model to design the controller. In IMC method, the approximated object model is parallelized with the actual model. The inverse of invertible part of the approximated dynamic model and a low pass filter is considered in the proposed controller design. As an IMC approach has an intuitive design with simple structure and it does not need an accurate model of the object, to explore its application in power control, molten salt breeder reactor (MSBR) core is chosen. A proportional-integral (PI) controller based on IMC technology is designed to control core power of MSBR. The filter constant of IMC technology is optimized with Class topper optimization (CTO) algorithm which improves robustness of the control scheme. Power control of MSBR core is studied for load tracking with step disturbance. This study shows that core power is controlled by CTO based IMC-PI controller.