This award provides funds to permit Dr. Kwang Y. Lee, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, to pursue with Dr.Young Moon Park, Department of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, for 36 months, a program of cooperative research on intelligent distributed control for power plants and power systems. These scientists will collaborate in research to achieve a highly automated control system which will maximize safety, reliability, and efficiency; minimize pollution; and ensure a rapid and cost-effective load following capability. The control systems to be developed will be applicable to nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants. In the present operating environment, system and controller failures or significant variations in operating conditions are dealt with by a human operator who must initiate appropriate control actions. Utility companies, therefore, rely on the development of extensive and complicated operating procedures and operator training to cope with the nearly continual changes inherent in normal power plant operation. The intelligent distributed control approach offers an alternative by providing fault-accommodating control algorithms and automated reconfiguration of control strategies. The U.S. and Korean collaborators are highly respected scientists with proven ability in this field. They have collaborated successfully in related research under NSF Grant No. INT-8617329. The present project will add an international cooperative dimension to Dr. Lee's research under NSF Grant No. EID-9212132 and will allow the collaborators to combine their talents and interests for mutual benefit. This project is relevant to the objectives of the U.S.- Korea Cooperative Science Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. and Korean scientists and engineers through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit. Korean participation in the project is supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF).
