Architecture of Industrial Automation System
Thursday, 25 September 2008The Functional Elements of Industrial Automation An Industrial Automation System consists of numerous elements that perform a variety of functions related to Instrumentation, Control, Supervision and Operations Management related to the industrial process. These elements may also communicate with one another to exchange information necessary for overall coordination and optimized operation of the plant/factory/process. Below, we classify the major functional elements typically found in IA systems and also describe the nature of technologies that are employed to realize the functions. Sensing and Actuation Elements These elements interface directly and physically to the process equipment and machines. The sensing elements translate the physical process signals such as temperature, pressure or displacement to convenient electrical or pneumatic forms of information, so that these signals can be used for analysis, decisions and finally, computation of control inputs. These computed control inputs, which again are in convenient electrical or pneumatic forms of information, need to be converted to physical process inputs such as, heat, force or flow-rate, before they can be applied to effect the desired changes in the process outputs. Such physical control inputs are provided by the actuation elements. Download PDF
