Evaluation of Human Machine Interface (HMI) on a Digital and Analog Control Room in Nuclear Power Plants Using a Fuzzy Logic Approach

Abstract

Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) are nowadays facing a transition from analog to digital control rooms, mainly in the form of new interfaces for displaying sensor information as of Human Machine Interface (HMI) were one-sided, taking into consideration either the human or the machine perspective. The approach presented in the present article considers human machine interfaces met in nuclear power plants as a joint system, where the performance of the NPP operator is evaluated according to the cooperation level achieved with the machine. In particular, the purpose of this study is to provide a methodology to evaluate the degree of flexibility of an operator during the transition period from an analog to a digital system. The proposed methodology has been implemented by utilizing fuzzy logic inference and realized with the fuzzy toolbox embedded in Matlab software.