Stepan Ozana

Radio Telemetry Unit for Online Monitoring System at Mining Dumps

The paper deals with the description of complex monitoring system for remote monitoring of thermal processes, concentration of toxic gases and dustiness of the atmosphere. Each of these quantities is measured and consequently processed by use of wireless modules communicating with supervisor system. It presents design of communication among particular sensors and further data processing and transfer to the dispatching center.

Long term temperature monitoring and thermal processes prediction within mining dumps

The paper deals with the description and results of long-term monitoring of thermal processes within the old coal dumps in Ostrava region. It presents methods and means of temperature measurements by specially installed temperature probes, including further wireless data transfer to dispatching center. The paper also discusses the possibility of creating predictive algorithm to predict changes of thermal processes inside the dumps, particularly increasing or decreasing temperature gradients and direction of propagation.

Application of PIL Approach for Automated Transportation Center

The paper describes the idea of design and implementation of Processor-in-the-loop (PIL) model of Automated Transportation Center (ATC) designed as a heavy laboratory operated by VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. It contains technical description of the real technology, the main concept of PIL model and its particular solution for ATC. As for means of design and implementation, the REX Control system was used as a real-time target running on ALIX system board that handles the software model of real technology while the real control system based on Simatic PLCs stays unchanged. The communication between PLCs and ALIX is provided by PROFINET protocol while all of the original I/O signals are re-mapped to match the PROFINET communication standard.

Simulation of MIT Rule-Based Adaptive Controller of a Power Plant Superheater

MIT rule is one of the basic techniques of adaptive control. It can be embedded into a general scheme of circuit with MRAC structure (reference adaptive controller). This paper deals with simulation of MRAC by use of MIT rule for a superheater which is a crucial part of a coal-fired power plant. A superheater has been chosen as a typical practical real plant with time-variant parameters and thus suitable to be controlled by adaptive control mechanism. The paper gives a comparison of adaptive control with MRAC and original PID control currently implemented in a chosen output superheater in Detmarovice power plant. Matlab&Simulink environment is used for a simulation of the control circuit described in this paper.

PID controller design based on global optimization technique with additional constraints

Abstract This paper deals with design of PID controller with the use of methods of global optimization implemented in Matlab environment and Optimization Toolbox. It is based on minimization of a chosen integral criterion with respect to additional requirements on control quality such as overshoot, phase margin and limits for manipulated value. The objective function also respects user-defined weigh coefficients for its particular terms for a different penalization of individual requirements that often clash each other such as for example overshoot and phase margin. The described solution is designated for continuous linear time-invariant static systems up to 4th order and thus efficient for the most of real control processes in practice.

An approach to identification procedures for PID control with PLC implementation

Control engineers usually face in industry to the large amount of complex processes. They need tools for assessing correct performance of control loops. This paper deals with the approach to identification procedures in control performance monitoring for PID control with PLC implementation. There are a lot of tools for performance monitoring on higher level of DCS. These tools are mainly implemented on PCs. In this paper we present implementation of identification procedures and control performance monitoring functions in programmable logic controllers (PLC).

Using MATLAB and COMSOL Multiphysics for Optimization of the Model of Underground Thermal Processes at Old Mining Dumps

The paper deals with the use of MATLAB and COMSOL Multiphysics environments for solution of optimization problem regarding underground thermal processes occurring at the old mining dumps affected by subsurface endogenous fires. It gives the description of measurement system and physical setup of the experimental borehole used to provide the real measured data for the model with the aim of its verification. The optimization problem is defined and solved by proposed computational technique that uses both MATLAB and COMSOL Multiphysics with the LiveLink tool that integrates these environments. Results of the optimization help to evaluate the total or relative heat power of the mass within mining dump.

Case studies on design, simulation and visualization of control and measurement applications using REX control system

REX Control System is a professional advanced tool for design and implementation of complex control systems that belongs to softPLC category. It covers the entire process starting from simulation of functionality of the application before deployment, through implementation on real-time target, towards analysis, diagnostics and visualization. Basically it consists of two parts: the development tools and the runtime system. It is also compatible with Simulink environment, and the way of implementation of control algorithm is very similar. The control scheme is finally compiled (using RexDraw utility) and uploaded into a chosen real-time target (using RexView utility). There is a wide variety of hardware platforms and real-time operating systems supported by REX Control System such as for example Windows Embedded, Linux, Linux/Xenomai deployed on SBC, IPC, PAC, Raspberry Pi and others with many I/O interfaces. It is modern system designed both for measurement and control applications, offering a lot of addit...

Case studies on optimization problems in MATLAB and COMSOL multiphysics by means of the livelink

LiveLink for COMSOL is a tool that integrates COMSOL Multiphysics with MATLAB to extend one’s modeling with scripting programming in the MATLAB environment. It allows user to utilize the full power of MATLAB and its toolboxes in preprocessing, model manipulation, and post processing. At first, the head script launches COMSOL with MATLAB and defines initial value of all parameters, refers to the objective function J described in the objective function and creates and runs the defined optimization task. Once the task is launches, the COMSOL model is being called in the iteration loop (from MATLAB environment by use of API interface), changing defined optimization parameters so that the objective function is minimized, using fmincon function to find a local or global minimum of constrained linear or nonlinear multivariable function. Once the minimum is found, it returns exit flag, terminates optimization and returns the optimized values of the parameters. The cooperation with MATLAB via LiveLink enhances a p...

Wireless Measurement of Carbon Monoxide Concentration

The paper deals with measurement of concentration of highly toxic carbon monoxide within the space of waste rock storage. This purpose gave origin to creation of units with integrated sensors of carbon monoxide that transmit measured concentration by means of wireless IQRF technology. The need of decreased power consumption implicated choice of electrochemical CO sensor connected to a special wireless technology named IQRF, working at 868 MHz frequency. Concentration is measured at two locations within waste rock dump. The paper analyzes consumption of energy spent on this type of measurement and it evaluates assumed endurance for battery-operated mode. Concentration of CO is sent to IQRF-AO converter that transfer the measured value to voltage level by means of double-channel DAC converter. This voltage is then brought to the inputs of telemetry unit that transmits the values of CO and other measured signals to a supervisor dispatching center.