Advanced Functions for Fieldbus based Integrated Control Systems

Abstract

Since a few years ago Industrial Automation was classified into functional categories related to the controlled process: continuous process, factory automation, batch control, building automation, etc. Such a classification reflected the differences between the technologies used in the various areas. Automation systems for a refinery were intrinsically different from those used in car manufacturing, with no relationship with technologies used in HVAC control, and so on. Today these differences do not exist any more (or at least are quite dimmed). Independently from the application, the technological platform below almost all the automation applications is basically a network of digital devices (nodes) connected through a serial bus. The push toward this structure comes basically from three facts:

• The introduction on the market of Intelligent Field Devices (IFD) with sophisticated functionality and communication capacity

• The migration of the industrial automation from custom platforms toward standard platforms, mainly PC based

• The acknowledgement that every plant is a mix of different processes, so flexibility is required to the automation system to satisfy the different requirements.