Operating and monitoring systems on the supervisory level of industrial plants offer operators a view into the automated process. Such systems, also known as HMI or SCADA systems, display actual values, visualize states and log errors. They also allow the user to interact with the plant, for example, to reset a tank level after refueling, increase the speed of a production plant or acknowledge errors and restart the plant.
With Speedgoat test systems, devices for operating and monitoring industrial plants can be tested while they are still being developed. The devices under test communicate with the communicate with a real-time plant emulation, also known as the digital twin, via OPC UA, Modbus TCP or MQTT exactly as in the real plant. This shifts testing efforts from the construction site to the laboratory and makes the final commissioning more efficient.
"To test new features of our internal SCADA system, we use Speedgoat's OPC UA interface. It allows us to cover all test scenarios using simulated signals and being independent of hardware availability, which saves resources and increases sustainability." Dr.-Ing. Oliver Stark, Sartorius
"To test new features of our internal SCADA system, we use Speedgoat's OPC UA interface.
It allows us to cover all test scenarios using simulated signals and being independent of hardware availability, which saves resources and increases sustainability."
Dr.-Ing. Oliver Stark, Sartorius
To control and monitor large production lines, operators use human-machine interfaces (HMI). HMIs are dashboards communicating with programmable logic controllers (PLC) via an industrial protocol such as Modbus TCP.
Test the HMI's underlying conditions and dependencies before commissioning the system in an experimental setup. A digital twin of the plant runs on a Speedgoat real-time test system using the same I/O interface and communications protocols as between the actual plant and the PLC
Frequently Used I/O Interfaces
Simulink® Application Resources
Verifying monitoring and control functions is vital to safe and efficient operation of automated systems such as traffic control centers, production monitoring systems, or windfarm data concentrators.
Communication within the plant network for both process and enterprise levels typically uses ethernet-based protocols such as OPC UA. Simulating and testing this network on a Speedgoat real-time test system allows system providers to test their control centers and monitoring solutions in the early stages. Users can validate compliance with safety standards and topics like user administration, access rights assignment, message encryption, and certificate management early.
Test all possible plant errors, even those that are hard to reproduce in an actual plant, using simulation. This saves time and resources.
Triggering and resetting faults under all possible conditions is one of the most time-consuming commissioning phases.
Simulating fault events using a Digital Twin of the plant running on a Speedgoat test system helps to test the SCADA system's fault indication, fault effect, and reset logic. Stateflow®, a graphical language using state machines and flow charts, simplifies describing the plant's complex logic.
System operators can be trained and tested early in the system's operation without risk.
Once a real control and data acquisition system is connected with a simulator for testing purposes, this setup can also be used for training. Replicate scenarios based on historical disasters to test operators on how they would respond when exposed to the same set of SCADA-level warnings in simulation.
Rapidly prototype control designs by applying rapid control prototyping, test embedded controllers withhardware-in-the-loop simulation of digital twins, and leverage Speedgoat systems as embedded controllers.
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