Activity Modeling for Qualitative and Quantitative Fault Simulation of Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

There is an increasing interest to find an effective mechanism of fault diagnosis for nuclear power plants. Fault simulation has been adopted by many production organizations to evaluate fault propagation scenarios, which is essential for safe plant operation and optimized maintenance. This paper presents an integrated framework for fault simulation where activity models for engineering practices of fault diagnosis are constructed on the basis of IDEF0. The proposed fault simulation framework is based on constructing qualitative fault models in the form of fault semantic networks (FSN) and defining quantitative fault models using statistical and probabilistic techniques. Static and dynamic fault propagation scenarios are synthesized in view of CANDU process models, which are constructed using POOM or plant/process object oriented modeling methodology. The proposed fault simulator framework will improve engineering life cycle activities during the design and operation of nuclear power plants.