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Condition monitoring for a neutral beam heating system

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posted on 2014-10-06, 10:27 authored by Nick Wright
This thesis presents the design of a condition monitoring scheme for the neutral beam cryogenic pumping system deployed in the Joint European Torus. The performance of the scheme is demonstrated by analysing its response to a range of fault scenarios. Condition monitoring has been successfully used in a diverse range of industries, from rail transport, to commercial power generation, to semiconductor manufacturing, among others. The application of model based condition monitoring to fusion applications has, however, been very limited. Given the importance of improving the availability of fusion devices, it was hypothesised that model based condition monitoring techniques could be used to good effect for this application. This provided the motivation for this research, which had the ultimate objective of demonstrating the usefulness of model based condition monitoring for fusion devices. The cryogenic pumping system used in the neutral beam heating devices operated by the project sponsor, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, was selected as the target for a demonstration condition monitoring scheme. This choice of target system was made and justified by the author through an analysis of its role in the neutral beam devices. The relative merits of several model based approaches were investigated. An observer based residual generation scheme, utilising a Kalman filter bank and residual thresholding arrangement was determined to be most suitable. A novel, accurate non-linear simulation model of the cryogenic pumping system was developed to act as a surrogate plant during the research, to facilitate the design and test procedure. This model was validated using historical process data. Two system identification techniques were used to obtain a set of linear models of the system for use in the Kalman filter bank. The scheme was tested by using the non-linear model to simulate ten different faults, all with unique failure modes. Two residual thresholding arrangements were tested and their performance was analysed to find the arrangement with the best performance. It was found that both variations of the scheme could detect all ten faults. The scheme using dual thresholds to check both the direction and magnitude of the residual signals was, however, better at isolating specific faults. The non-linear simulation model developed during the research was proven to be a genuine representation of the plant, by validating its response using historical process data. As such, it could be used in the future as the basis for a model based control system design procedure. The effectiveness of the scheme at detecting a range of faults which can arise in neutral beam heating systems supports the case for the future use of model based condition monitoring in nuclear fusion research.

Funding

EPSRC, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Publisher

© Nick Wright

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.

EThOS Persistent ID

uk.bl.ethos.631651

Language

  • en

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