ABSTRACT
Control loops are the most important components in automation systems. Product
quality, operation safety, material and energy consumption, and thus the financial
performance, are directly or indirectly linked to the performance of control systems.
To achieve, restore and sustain top performance of control loops is thus a vital interest
for any company. Control performance assessment (CPA) provides a framework for
automatically and systematically assessing the performance of control loops, detecting
and diagnosing root causes of poor performance, as well as suggesting measures to
improve control performance or avoid performance degradation. CPA is an important
asset management technology to maintain systems highly efficient operation
performance of automation systems in production plants.CPA provide an online
automated procedure that delivers information to plant personnel for determining
whether specified performance targets and that evaluates the performance of the
control system.
In this paper, after studying the domestic and international algorithm of control
loop performance assessment, we design and development control loop evaluation
software based on OPC using Visual Basic software development environment, which
includes OPC communication interface. This evaluation software provides online real-
time and offline historical data assessment, and assisted with frequency characteristic
analysis of the historical data, which is convenient to process engineers to evaluate
control loop performance at the scene. The main research work and innovation points
of this article are as follows:
1. On the basis of studying domestic and international literatures, books and
technical data of control loop performance assessment, this article discusses the
background and significance of control loop performance assessment. In this paper,
the states of current industrial control loop are analyzed and the root causes of the
poor control loop performance are discussed. Briefly introducing the main content,
assessment criteria and basic process of the control loop performance assessment,
which pave the way and lay the theoretical basis for the follow chapters.
2. Using autoregressive moving average (ARMAX) model describes the control
system, and then the principle of minimum variance control and the calculation of
minimum variance performance index are introduced in detail. Then the minimum
variance index is calculated by using of time series analysis technology and gives the
algorithm of the minimum variance performance assessment. The extended horizon
index, historical data benchmark, generalized minimum variance principle and online
assessment algorithm are also introduced in this paper, which are the foundation for
software design of follow chapters.
3. The industrial communication standard OPC technology, OPC server and
packaging DLL, and the main function of OPC briefly introduced. The foundation
OPC knowledge required for developing the applications which use OPC data access
automation interface is illustrated.