Development of a (U-Zr)N-Fuel Synthesis Control and Data Acquisition Program in LabVIEW

Abstract: In this thesis, software for control and data acquisition was developed. The main purpose of the software is to provide overview and control of uranium and zirconium nitride syntheses. This includes connecting multiple gas flow controllers and a furnace to the software via a DAQ-module. The developing platform was LabVIEW, a graphical programming language, which offers both great challenges and great advantages. The advantages of easily configurable programs need to be weighed against the difficulty to organize and maintain. The resulting software lives up to most of the requirements, however the control engineering of the furnace was much more challenging than first expected. There are still many improvements that can be made but the end product is fully functional, and provides the ability to simultaneously monitor and control synthesis reactions with multiple gases and reaction environments.