Propulsion Control of Marine Nuclear Reactor by Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation (HILS)

Compared with offline simulation based on software completely, Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation (HILS) is a simulation method based on software and hardware coupling, which can not only verify the principle of the model studied, but also feedback hardware response for comparison, shorten product test cycle, improve research and development efficiency and accuracy. Taking the marine nuclear reactor as the background, this paper modelled the main circuit of energy power and the part of propulsion power output, simulated the energy power module offline based on Modelica language, and coupled Arduino MCU with LEGO parts to simulate the hardware response of propulsion power output. This study used OpenModelica to construct the steady-state and transient simulation operation of the off-line simulation model, realized the interaction between the hardware signal input and the offline simulation model, processed the mechanical response of the simulation output and communicated with the external hardware. Finally, the feedback action response was compared with the key parameters in the existing literature. The results show that the simulation results of the model and the hardware response feedback results are consistent with the literature parameters, and based on the coupling of Modelica language with Arduino MCU can carry out the HILS for the marine nuclear power system in steady state and transient state.