Sliding Mode Disturbance Observer-Based Robust Prescribed Performance Tracking Control for Research Reactor

This paper presents a sliding mode disturbance observer (SMDO)-based robust prescribed performance control (RPPC) method for research reactor systems with system uncertainty. The existing reactor control methods have not considered the disturbance compensation and improvement of the transient response at the same time although both of these issues are much important in the reactor control. To achieve these control objectives, the prescribed performance function is introduced and then the SMDO-based RPPC is designed for the research reactor such that the transient tracking error remains within the desired bound even in the presence of the system uncertainty. The stability of the overall research reactor control system is analyzed and simulation results are provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.