Session: 01-04: Nuclear Plant Operation, Modification, Life Extension, Maintenance and Life Cycle - IV

Paper Number: 134799

134799 - Research on Automatic Cable Layout Method for Nuclear Power Plant Based on A* Algorithm 

Abstract: 

Cable path design is an integral part of nuclear power plant layout design. In nuclear power plants, cables exhibit characteristics of being numerous in quantity, diverse in types, and having multiple installation standards. At present, the layout design of typical nuclear power plant cable channels has always relied heavily on engineering experience. Relying solely on manual deployment is not only inefficient, but may also not yield the optimal solution. To alleviate the human element in design and accelerate the generation of economically superior solutions, we propose an automated layout approach.

This method uses a grid-based approach to achieve spatial discretization of nuclear power plant civil structures and equipment, and uses the A* algorithm to search for cable paths within the grid diagram. Aiming at the shortcomings of the traditional A* algorithm's slow pathfinding speed in large power plants and complex environments, an improved A* algorithm for nuclear power plant cable layout is proposed. Firstly, according to the priority of laying cables along the wall, characteristic lines were drawn along the wall in the entire factory area. The feature lines intersect with each other, forming a network that connects various rooms. This ensures that the A* algorithm preferentially finds its way along these feature lines, thereby reducing the number of nodes traversed. Secondly, the fixed step size of the traditional A* algorithm is replaced with adaptive step size. When using a fixed step size, the A* algorithm can only examine nodes within a fixed step size range during each iteration. If a region is divided into a large number of grids for the sake of precision, then a substantial number of grids need to be checked before completing the pathfinding process. This can result in significantly prolonged program execution times. Specific strategies are employed that allows the A* algorithm to use larger step sizes in open spaces to ensure efficiency, while using smaller step sizes around obstacles to ensure accuracy. Finally, the cost function of the A* algorithm has been redesigned to better reflect the actual layout costs. In the traditional A* algorithm, the cost function is designed to assess the distance cost from the start node to the goal node. For the specific costs of cable layout in the nuclear power plant complex, such as length, bending, wall penetration, etc., we redesigned the cost function in the A* algorithm to facilitate calculation.

The aforementioned methods have been implemented in the C# programming language and have undergone testing. The results confirm the feasibility of the proposed method.

Keywords: A* algorithm, Cable layout, Automatic layout, Nuclear power plant

Presenting Author: Hailong Du Harbin Engineering University

Presenting Author Biography: I am a doctoral student currently studying at Harbin Engineering University.

Authors:

Hailong Du Harbin Engineering University
Jie Cheng Harbin Engineering University
Jianjun Wang Harbin Engineering University
Puzhen Gao Harbin Engineering University
Xuchen Deng China Nuclear Power Engineering Co.,Ltd.
Kai Tang China Nuclear Power Engineering Co.,Ltd.
Lei Wang China Nuclear Power Engineering Co.,Ltd.
Jincheng Su China Nuclear Power Engineering Co.,Ltd.