Development of Real Time Embedded Control System for Transfer Arm Examination Facility in PFBR

Vol. 4  Issue 1
Year:2015
Issue:Feb-Apr 
Title:Development of Real Time Embedded Control System for Transfer Arm Examination Facility in PFBR
Author Name:R. Poornima and G. Kannan
Synopsis:
Transfer Arm (TA) is an offset arm type fuel-handling machine which is designed to handle core sub-assemblies consisting of fuel, absorber, blanket and reflector sub assemblies. The Transfer Arm Examination Facility (TAEF) control system is to facilitate the operation of Transfer Arm from the local control panel. The control system controls the raising and lowering of Guide Tube, raising and lowering of Gripper Hoist, rotation of Top Structure, opening and closing of Gripper Fingers and locking and unlocking of gripper hoist. The embedded control system has to be highly reliable as it will affect the safety and availability of nuclear plant. Hence, it is proposed to develop a real time embedded control system to carry out the safe operations on Transfer Arm. The project work involves, modelling the control logics (interlocks) using Safety Critical Application Development Environment (SCADE) suite, carryout the model coverage and simulation analysis and formal verification of the model using design verifier of the SCADE suite by creating few critical properties. The SCADE generated code has to be integrated with the hardware using cross complier, generate executable file and test the functionality system. The manual code shall contain necessary diagnostic logics to test the healthiness of the system. Adequate test cases have to be generated from the requirements. The status of all drives will be monitored through a GUI.