• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.211-217
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• 2016

Most nuclear power plants now utilize solid grounded low voltage systems. For safety and reliability reasons, the low voltage (LV) high resistance grounding (HRG) system is also increasingly used in the pulp and paper, petroleum and chemical, and semiconductor industries. Fault detection is easiest and fastest with a solidly grounded system. However, a solidly grounded system has many limitations such as severe fault damage, poor reliability on essential circuits, and electrical noise caused by the high magnitude of ground fault currents. This paper will briefly address the strengths and weaknesses of LV grounding systems. An example of a low voltage HRG system in the LV system of a nuclear power plant will be presented. The HRG system is highly recommended for LV systems of nuclear power plants if sufficient considerations are provided to prevent nuisance tripping of ground fault relays and to avoid the deterioration of system reliability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.692-701
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• 2019

Recently, instrumentation and control (I&C) systems in nuclear power plants have undergone digitalization. Owing to the unique characteristics of digital I&C systems, the reliability analysis of digital systems has become an important element of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). In a reliability analysis of digital systems, fault-tolerant techniques and their effectiveness must be considered. A fault injection experiment was performed on a safety-critical digital I&C system developed for nuclear power plants to evaluate the effectiveness of fault-tolerant techniques implemented in the target system. A software-implemented fault injection in which faults were injected into the memory area was used based on the assumption that all faults in the target system will be reflected in the faults in the memory. To reduce the number of required fault injection experiments, the memory assigned to the target software was analyzed. In addition, to observe the effect of the fault detection coverage of fault-tolerant techniques, a PSA model was developed. The analysis of the experimental result also can be used to identify weak points of fault-tolerant techniques for capability improvement of fault-tolerant techniques

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.259-264
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• 2005

This paper presents a vital area identification (VAI) method based on the current fault tree analysis (FTA) and probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) techniques for the physical protection of nuclear power plants. A structured framework of a top event prevention set analysis (TEPA) application to the VAI of nuclear power plants is also delineated. One of the important processes for physical protection in a nuclear power plant is VAI that is a process for identifying areas containing nuclear materials, structures, systems or components (SSCs) to be protected from sabotage, which could directly or indirectly lead to core damage and unacceptable radiological consequences. A software VIP (Vital area Identification Package based on the PSA method) is being developed by KAERI for the VAI of nuclear power plants. Furthermore, the KAERI fault tree solver FTREX (Fault Tree Reliability Evaluation eXpert) is specialized for the VIP to generate the candidates of the vital areas. FTREX can generate numerous MCSs for a huge fault tree with the lowest truncation limit and all possible prevention sets.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.388-392
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• 2009

Operation of LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) plants requires an effective maintenance strategy. To this end, the long-term and short-term trend of faults, such as mechanical and electrical troubles, should be identified so as to take proactive approach for ensuring the smooth and productive operation. However, it is not an easy task to predict the fault trend in LNG plants. Many variables and unexpected conditions make it quite difficult for the facility manager to be well prepared for future faulty conditions. This paper presents a model to predict the fault trend in a LNG plant. ARIMA (Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average) model is combined with Wavelet Transform to enhance the prediction capability of the proposed model. Test results show the potential of the proposed model for the preventive maintenance strategy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.176-186
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• 2015

Pattern classifications have become important tools for fault diagnosis in nuclear power plants (NPP). However, it is often difficult to obtain training data under fault conditions to train a supervised classification model. By contrast, normal plant operating data can be easily made available through increased deployment of supervisory, control, and data acquisition systems. Such data can also be used to train classification models to improve the performance of fault diagnosis scheme. In this paper, a fault diagnosis scheme based on semisupervised classification (SSC) scheme is developed. In this scheme, new measurements collected from the plant are integrated with data observed under fault conditions to train the SSC models. The trained models are subsequently applied to new measurements for fault diagnosis. In comparison with supervised classifiers, the proposed scheme requires significantly fewer data collected under fault conditions to train the classifier. The developed scheme has been validated using different fault scenarios on a desktop NPP simulator as well as on a physical NPP simulator using a graph-based SSC algorithm. All the considered faults have been successfully diagnosed. The results have demonstrated that SSC is a promising tool for fault diagnosis in NPPs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.317-324
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• 2019

A high energy arcing fault event occurred in the medium-voltage (13.8 kV and 4.16 kV) metalclad switchgears in a nuclear power plant not only affecting switchgear but also connected equipment due to the arc energy. The high energy arcing fault also causes a fire that influences the safety function of the unit. Therefore, from the safety point of view, it is necessary to evaluate the influences of high energy arcing fault events on the safety functions of nuclear power plants. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the characteristics of high energy arcing faults and propose a high energy arcing fault mitigation scheme for medium voltage networks in nuclear power plants.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1990.10a
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• pp.339-343
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• 1990

This paper describes a neural-network-based methodology for providing a potential solution in the area of process fault diagnosis. The existing neural network for fault diagnosis learn fault node by using pairs of single-symptom-single-cause only. But in real plants, the effect of a fault propagates continuously from it's origin; different sensor values reflect this. In this paper, we suggest a new method which can handle the effect of symptom propagation. The proposed method can find the exact origin of the fault of which the symptom is propagated continuously with time.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.7
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• pp.994-1002
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• 2013

This study suggests a generalized availability and safety evaluation model to evaluate the influences to the system's fault tolerant capabilities depending on automatic fault detection function such as the automatic periodic testings. The conventional evaluation model of automatic fault detection function deals only with the self diagnostics, and supposes that the fault detection coverage of self diagnostics is always constant. But all of the fault detection methods could be degraded. For example, the periodic surveillance test has the potential human errors or test equipment errors, the self diagnostics has the potential degradation of built-in logics, and the automatic periodic testing has the potential degradation of automatic test facilities. The suggested evaluation models have incorporated the loss or erroneous behaviors of the automatic fault detection methods. The availability and the safety of each module of the safety grade platform have been evaluated as they were applied the automatic periodic test methodology and the fault tolerant evaluation models. The availability and safety of the safety grade platform were improved when applied the automatic periodic testing. Especially the fault tolerant capability of the processor module with a weak self-diagnostics and the process parameter input modules were dramatically improved compared to the conventional cases. In addition, as a result of the safety evaluation of the digital reactor protection system, the system safety of the digital parts was improved about 4 times compared to the conventional cases.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.61-65
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• 2002

The fault detection and diagnosis of rotating machinery widely used in plants including the ship are important for maintaining the performance of Plants. Recently, the wavelet transform has been recognized an efficient method to detect a little variation of physical quantities by the synchronous localization of time and frequency domains using the translation and dilation of signals. In this Paper, In order to develop efficient and reliable fault detection and diagnosis system rotating machines, the performance of wavelet transformation to detect a little variation of machine status and neural network to diagnose the cause of machine faults are investigated and experimented.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.710-713
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• 2005

In this paper, a design method to detect faults in plants with uncertainties is proposed. When a plant has faults, the plant will be corrupted by an unknown fault signal. In addition, the plant also includes uncertainties, such as disturbances and plant parameter deviations. In this case, the proposed method estimates the fault signal by using an adaptive observer. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.