Gpu-accelerated digital twin system for real-time thermal-hydraulic simulation and control of space nuclear reactors

A method for real-time thermal-hydraulic simulation and thrust control of a nuclear thermal propulsion reactor, the method comprising:

• (a) receiving, at a GPU computing device, current reactor state data including fuel temperature distributions and neutron precursor concentrations;
• (b) computing, on the GPU computing device using a Crank-Nicolson temporal discretization with Thomas algorithm tridiagonal solver, updated radial temperature profiles for each of a plurality of fuel elements simultaneously in parallel;
• (c) computing, on the GPU computing device, updated reactor power using six-group delayed neutron kinetics with Doppler temperature reactivity feedback;
• (d) computing, on the GPU computing device, convective heat transfer coefficients between the fuel elements and hydrogen propellant;
• (e) determining, by a closed-loop controller on the GPU computing device, an adjusted hydrogen propellant mass flow rate based on a difference between a measured or computed exhaust temperature and a target exhaust temperature;
• and (f) outputting the adjusted mass flow rate as a control signal to a propellant flow control valve, wherein steps (a) through (f) are completed within a p95 latency of less than 10 milliseconds.

An embedded GPU system for autonomous control of a space nuclear thermal propulsion reactor during deep-space mission operation, the system comprising:

• (a) an embedded GPU processor;
• (b) a non-transitory memory storing a digital twin model of the nuclear thermal propulsion reactor, the digital twin model comprising a Crank-Nicolson plus Thomas algorithm thermal solver, a six-group delayed neutron kinetics solver, and a closed-loop thrust controller;
• (c) sensor input interfaces receiving reactor instrumentation data including temperature, neutron flux, and propellant flow measurements;
• and (d) actuator output interfaces transmitting control commands to propellant flow control valves, wherein the system operates autonomously without requiring ground communication links and achieves real-time control with p95 latency below 10 milliseconds.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a GPU processor, cause the GPU processor to perform a method for GPU-accelerated nuclear thermal propulsion reactor digital twin simulation and control, the method comprising:

• (a) allocating GPU memory for radial temperature arrays for each of a plurality of fuel elements and for six delayed neutron precursor group concentrations;
• (b) for each simulation time step, computing in parallel across all fuel elements updated radial temperature profiles using a Crank-Nicolson discretization solved by a Thomas algorithm;
• (c) computing updated reactor power using six-group point kinetics with Doppler reactivity feedback;
• (d) computing an exhaust temperature from the hydrogen propellant energy balance;
• and (e) computing a control output for hydrogen mass flow rate adjustment using a proportional-integral controller based on the exhaust temperature.