A Framework for the Evaluation of Distributed Control Systems in Industrial Control Applications

The research develops a test-bench and framework to evaluate distributed control systems (DCSs) against industrial control system requirements. A real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test-bench and framework has been used for the evaluation of a DeltaV M3 DCS from Emerson Process Management. The test-bench measures: process control behaviour including overshoot and settling time; and I/O throughput, latency, and jitter for analog, digital, Modbus serial and OPC over Ethernet. The DCS successfully controls a real-time Matlab simulation model of a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) steam generator, with a maximum water-level overshoot of 4.20%. The evaluated DCS has I/O throughput between 1.06 and 5.05 Hz, and latencies between 72 and 310 ms. The OPC over Ethernet is the most deterministic I/O channel, but has the lowest throughput. The test-bench and framework enables the evaluation of new technology for use in NPP and many other industrial control applications