Integrated Development Of The Virtual Nuclear Instrument

Virtual instruments results from the combination of instruments technology and computer technology. With the rapid development of computer technology, computer measurement and control application has been used in various areas. Many nuclear instruments need to be controlled by computer and much nuclear data needs to be processed by computer, which gives a great chance for the application of virtual instruments in nuclear areas.Multi-channel analyzer, fixed counter, digital oscilloscope and signal generator are used quite a lot in the nuclear experiments. Traditional instruments usually have more single functionality, higher price, harder to update and more complex to operate, which by some means restricts the implementation of nuclear experiments. Developing these four instruments based on virtual instruments technology, integrating their functions in one computer, self-defining functions and user interface and realizing remote operation will make the nuclear virtual instruments more easily to maintain, more simply to operate and more cheaply to buy, which have very important worthiness and promising foreground.Neutron scatter equipment's computer measurement and control system is a typical example of virtual instruments' application in the nuclear area. It evidently proved the unique role of virtual instruments in the construction of modern nuclear equipments. A lot of instruments needing the experimenter to operate manually no longer fulfills the modern nuclear experiments' need. Computer measurement and control system based on virtual instruments makes the experimenter far from the experiment locale and auto-processes the data got from the experiment, which greatly improves the experiments' automation extent and reduces the experimenter's workload.Radioactive substance detection instrument and China Experiment Rapid Reactor radioactive monitor system's processing module are both the result of nuclear application research. They both have their own functions and can be operated in a single way. But if we want to develop a large system, then we need to connect the two instruments to computer and integrate them with other systems. With enough research work having been done on virtual instruments' characteristics and its advantage and challenge in the nuclear area's application, this paper developed a virtual instruments system which integrates all the functionalities described above. The paper analyzed the function of each system, the hardware's performance and the software's core code. It concentrated on the system's structure and the software's arithmetic during the whole developing process.