Controls and Control Theory Commons^™

Development Of Instrumentation And Control Systems For An Integral Large Scale Pressurized Water Reactor, Matthew Rowland Morrow Lish

Doctoral Dissertations

Small and large scale integral light water reactors are being developed to supply electrical power and to meet the needs of process heat, primarily for water desalination. This dissertation research focuses on the instrumentation and control of a large integral inherently safe light water reactor (designated as I²S-LWR) which is being designed as part of a grant by the U.S. Department of Energy Integrated Research Project (IRP). This 969 MWe integral pressurized water reactor (PWR) incorporates as many passive safety features as possible while maintaining competitive costs with current light water reactors. In support of this work, the …

Design And Control Of Close Proximity Indirect Exposure For Nonthermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma-Based Oxidation Of Carbon Fiber Precursor, Truman Andrew Bonds

Doctoral Dissertations

A new plasma-based method for the stabilization of polyacrylonitrile carbon fiber precursor utilizing reactive chemical species derived from a custom atmospheric pressure plasma generation system was developed and demonstrated. As opposed to the conventional stabilization method of convective heating in air, plasma-based stabilization efficiently introduces oxidative reactive species that both diffuse through and react faster with the precursor filaments, resulting in a faster and more efficient process. This method was successfully demonstrated with a variety of precursor chemistries, grades and sizes. The development effort was entirely experimental, with successive processing devices designed and constructed to examine various aspects of the …

Stochastic And Optimal Distributed Control For Energy Optimization And Spatially Invariant Systems, Jin Dong

Doctoral Dissertations

Improving energy efficiency and grid responsiveness of buildings requires sensing, computing and communication to enable stochastic decision-making and distributed operations. Optimal control synthesis plays a significant role in dealing with the complexity and uncertainty associated with the energy systems.

The dissertation studies general area of complex networked systems that consist of interconnected components and usually operate in uncertain environments. Specifically, the contents of this dissertation include tools using stochastic and optimal distributed control to overcome these challenges and improve the sustainability of electric energy systems.

The first tool is developed as a unifying stochastic control approach for improving energy efficiency …

Intrinsically Motivated Exploration In Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning, Christopher M. Vigorito

Doctoral Dissertations

The acquisition of hierarchies of reusable skills is one of the distinguishing characteristics of human intelligence, and the learning of such hierarchies is an important open problem in computational reinforcement learning (RL). In humans, these skills are learned during a substantial developmental period in which individuals are intrinsically motivated to explore their environment and learn about the effects of their actions. The skills learned during this period of exploration are then reused to great effect later in life to solve many unfamiliar problems very quickly. This thesis presents novel methods for achieving such developmental acquisition of skill hierarchies in artificial …