Study On EPICS Reliability Technology In TMSR

EPICS (Experimental and Physics Industrial Control System) is one of distributeddigital control infrastructures based on software toolkits, and it is more and more widelyemployed in many larger-scale laboratories for physical experimental facilities andindustrial applications in the world. As one type of generation IV reactors, TMSR(Thorium Molten Salt Reactor) has been designed to use EPICS platform to develop itscontrol system.The reliability of EPICS, especially used as a reactor basic control system platform,is of greatest concern, and the main task of this thesis work. This study focused on thekernel IOC (Input and Output Controller）and investigated technology that can improvethe reliability of EPICS.In this thesis, the developing history of reactor instrumentation and control system(I&Cs), especially the digitalized I&Cs, and its design principles are described andanalyzed. The overall architecture of EPICS, each part function of IOC and the designof record support module, device support module and device drive module areintroduced and analyzed. Error logging and process variable gateway are studied andapplied to improve the reliability.The first part of this thesis is to achieve IOC redundancy by using Heartbeat andAutosave packages. IOC script is designed as one service resource of Heartbeat, thusHeartbeat can control start/stop of IOC, and then realize IOC redundancy switch.Autosave is used to periodically save IOC data and keep data synchronized betweenredundant IOCs. The experimental test results show that IOC redundancy scheme basedon Heartbeat and Autosave is feasible and provides a new technical means for highavailability of TMSR control system.The second part of this thesis is the design and implementation of IOC redundancyby modifying iocRedundancy package and writing control routine to meet the projectrequirement. This IOC redundancy scheme is practically used in rod control and rod position (RCRP) system of TMSR, and the test results show that redundant IOCs canswitch fast and run stably for a long time.The last part of this thesis is to independently develop device support modulebased on HPI (Hardware Platform Interface) API (Application Programming Interface)to manage TMSR I&C’s mainframe ATCA (Advanced Telecom ComputingArchitecture) chassis. No requirement for the EPICS users to learn differentmanagement commands of various ATCA factories after this module is activated, andparameters of the ATCA chassis, such as temperature, power supply and fan speed canbe easily monitored and controlled in real-time via the functionalities design and clickfrom OPI（Operator Interface）.Innovation points of this thesis are as follows:1. IOC redundancy switch and data synchronization are first realized underHeartbeat and Autosave packages.2. It is the first time to develop redundancy IOCs suitable Siemens PLCs underiocRedundancy package.3. A general device support module based on HPI API has been developed tomanage hardware with HPI interface.