Distributed computer control for industrial process systems: Characteristics, attributes, and an experimental facility

The very rapid advances in digital hardware and the less rapid, but still significant, advances in computer software have led to the development of microprocessor-based distributed control systems by all of the major vendors of process control equipment. These systems have attracted very considerable interest on the part of the process industries. This paper describes a laboratory facility, centered around a Foxboro SPECTRUM distributed control system, which will provide an experimental base for the motivation, development, and testing of analytical theory, methodologies, and engineering tools for the design and analysis of these complex control systems. A discussion of the characteristics and attributes of distributed computer control is followed by an overall description of the laboratory facility. This includes a description of the control, communication, and computer components as well as the instrumented test-bed processes. Finally, an qverview of several current and proposed research studies using this facility is presented.