The use of IEC 61131-3 to enhance PLC control and Matlab/Simulink process simulations

This paper proposes a IEC 61131-3 compliant translation methodology to emulate any PLC control program in the Matlab/Simulink environment. The developed methodology translates the PLC control program into Matlab/Simulink software language through the use of the IEC 61131-3 standard. Any IEC 61131-3 compliant PLC control program is translated into a Matlab/Simulink compatible m-file, within the Matlab/Simulink environment, containing the correspondent PLC control program translation. This file will be called as a Matlab function, within the Matlab/Simulink environment, and will control the model of the industrial process as long as the simulation runs. For the moment, this tool is being evaluated as a teaching tool for process automation classes.