11/21/2023
By Danielle Fretwell

The Francis College of Engineering, Department of Energy Engineering (Nuclear), invites you to attend a Master's Thesis defense by Andrew Hamel on "Development of a Cyber-Physical System: A Testbed for Nuclear Reactor Control Systems."

Candidate Name: Andrew Hamel
Degree: Master’s
Defense Date: Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023
Time: noon to 1:30 p.m.
Location: SOU250

Committee Members

  • Advisor Sukesh Aghara, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Chemical Engineering, UMass Lowell
  • Valmor de Almeida, Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering, UMass Lowell

Brief Abstract:
As the digital transformation in design of engineering systems and operation continues to permeate across all industrial sectors, there is a growing need for cybersecurity research and digital controls testing. The nuclear energy industry is seeing an acceleration in adoption of digital controls systems for safety, monitoring, and reactor operations.

In service of that need, this thesis work involves the design, construction, and testing of a cyber-physical testbed. This testbed was designed around the Mock Fuel Facility (MFF), a scale model of a UMass Lowell Research Reactor (UMLRR) fuel assembly which operates submerged in a large tank of water. This testbed simulates heat transfer within the core of the UMLRR by pumping water across heated aluminum plates designed in the style of MTR type fuel. The testbed uses a pump and plate heating system to explore operational conditions in both forced and natural convection modes. The testbed observes the system state using a flowmeter, watt transducer, and a series of thermocouples. This network of sensors tracks flowrate, applied power, and temperature and relays this data to a networked PC running a digital control program written in Python. This central program can control the testbed using a number of schemes, increasing control scope and accuracy.

A series of steady state and short-term dynamic experiments characterized fundamental thermohydraulic properties of the MFF and demonstrated the versatility of the testbed. The experiments highlighted the flexibility of the central Python control program in contrast to other digital systems: the control program can cede control of the system to physical or virtual PLCs using Modbus TCP/IP or OPC UA, opening up a wide range of external control solutions.

This testbed may serve as a foundation for a larger hardware-in-the-loop system, designed with the capability to interface with other nuclear power plant simulators. Asherah, an existing simulator, has been modified to model the UMLRR and may be used to expand the scope of the cyber-physical complexity of the testbed.