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Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Robert P. Martin, Robert M. Edwards
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 134 | Number 3 | March 2000 | Pages 293-305
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-A2117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The development and demonstration of a new algorithm to reduce modeling and state-estimation uncertainty in best-estimate simulation codes has been investigated. Demonstration is given by way of a prototype reactor core monitor. The architecture of this monitor integrates a control-theory-based, distributed-parameter estimation technique into a production-grade best-estimate simulation code. The Kalman Filter-Sequential Least-Squares (KFSLS) parameter estimation algorithm has been extended for application into the computational environment of the best-estimate simulation code RELAP5-3D. In control system terminology, this configuration can be thought of as a "best-estimate" observer. The application to a distributed-parameter reactor system involves a unique modal model that approximates physical components, such as the reactor, by describing both states and parameters by an orthogonal expansion. The basic KFSLS parameter estimation is used to dynamically refine a spatially varying (distributed) parameter. The application of the distributed-parameter estimator is expected to complement a traditional nonlinear best-estimate simulation code by providing a mechanism for reducing both code input (modeling) and output (state-estimation) uncertainty in complex, distributed-parameter systems.