New design of variable structure control based on lightning search algorithm for nuclear reactor power system considering load-following operation

Abstract Reactor control is a standout amongst the most vital issues in the nuclear power plant. In this paper, the optimal design of variable structure controller (VSC) based on the lightning search algorithm (LSA) is proposed for a nuclear reactor power system. The LSA is a new optimization algorithm. It is used to find the optimal parameters of the VSC instead of the trial and error method or experts of the designer. The proposed algorithm is used for the tuning of the feedback gains and the sliding equation gains of the VSC to prove a good performance. Furthermore, the parameters of the VSC are tuned by the genetic algorithm (GA). Simulation tests are carried out to verify the performance and robustness of the proposed LSA-based VSC compared with GA-based VSC. The results prove the high performance and the superiority of VSC based on LSA compared with VSC based on GA.