Autocuidado y Belleza

Successful testing in a laboratory environment will continue to be a challenge to the instrumentation engineer. Success depends on adequate technical expertise, state-of-the-art instrumentation, control processes, data acquisition, facilities, and capabilities to plan, conduct, analyze and report results of developmental, operational, production and evaluation testing of a wide variety of material. There is also the requirement to create, as closely as possible, a realistic situation while simultaneously causing external changes in conditions in order to observe the responses of the system.

2.2.1 Application requirements. Current and new technology has provided the instrumentation engineer with a proven way of transforming the way test data is collected, displayed, processed and reported in a laboratory environment. New technologies in communications, process control, test production, graphical displays and data acquisition have enabled test data and reports to be collected, processed and disseminated in a timelier manner and with increased assurances of the produced data. These new technologies have also provided the user with the capability to monitor and disseminate this test data in real-time through advancements in the Internet, Intranet and through the continuing evolution of the wireless Ethernet.

2.2.2 Operational requirements. Current chemical, biological and other laboratory test mission requirements dictate the real need for testing a wide variety of material to be used by both the Armed Services and Civilian authorities in as near or actual environment as is possible. This requires the use of certified laboratory and chamber infrastructures specifically developed for this type testing. Process Logic Controllers (PLC), Graphical User Interface (GUI) and Data Acquisition for these chambers and laboratories and the test processes is achieved in most cases by utilizing state-of-the-art, off-the-shelf technology already developed and widely used by private industry in areas of chemical processing, nuclear and fossil fuel electrical generating plants and the oil and petroleum industries. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system incorporates new technological advancements in software control and data acquisition which also utilizes Process Logic Control technology. These same systems are designed to integrate with advanced hardware specially designed to mate and communicate between a wide variety of instrumentation including “smart transducers.” Because many tests in the laboratory arena are not strictly Department of Defense (DoD) sponsored, a greater amount of flexibility is required in the data acquisition, display and process control method.

2.2.3 SCADA requirements. The SCADA systems used to perform this type of testing must be a full function Human/Machine Interface (HMI) SCADA package capable of industrial process monitoring and control applications and it must be an event driven system based on peer-to-peer client/server technology. This means that individual functions are divided into two subsystems, servers (data acquisition, data generation and data storage) and clients (data display and

presentation). Any number of clients and servers can operate independently and simultaneously on the same computer or on several computers linked by a high-speed network. SCADA

systems have built in drivers that offer several different types of interfaces to connect to third party I/O systems such as OPTO-22, Allen Bradley, and Moore. Clients also use Active X controls and Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) to link data to and from other applications. They can be designed for both small and large-scale process monitoring and logic control schemes.

Industry SCADA systems are ideal for applications that require several GUI screens and remote terminals for monitoring and Man/Machine interfacing.

2.2.4 Software and hardware architecture. Current technologies, both software and hardware, offer a wide range of capabilities and future technology will greatly increase these capabilities, thereby expanding the Instrumentation Engineer’s ability to further test current and future DoD

functions, while simultaneously collecting, processing, displaying and archiving large amounts of test information over extended periods of time. These SCADA systems often require the ability to manage and collect information from an excess of 300 instruments/sensors with a processed output in excess of 500 channels of information. In addition, test parameters may dictate other instrumentation needs such as instrument control, optical alignment/positioning, high-speed (snapshot) data collection, and initiating third party programming routines. The total instrumentation package also must have the ability to change program definitions, add or delete instruments, add or delete and modify channel information and modify test control parameters, all with little or no lead time and causing no effect to the laboratory or chamber environments.

2.2.5 Components and usability. Present testing standards require Ethernet compatibility with data transfer, communications, and operability from remote test stations. Real time data

monitoring and viewing, large test infrastructure processes with a process controller requiring little or no human interface for precise control of environmental parameters is also a high priority. The SCADA system must also provide precise data acquisition for desired data points, the capability of either remote operability via Ethernet and/or a stand-alone capability, electronic data transfer, data processing, a data archival ability, security programmability, and

communications with a wide variety of industry standard instrumentation.

System components would include the components listed below. Each of the

components should be able to be upgraded independently of each other without affecting the other components as new technologies are developed.

a. Pentium desktop or laptop computers with Ethernet capability b. Industry standard SCADA software

c. Industry standard hardware platforms with standard Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communications protocols

d. Industry standard instrumentation

In addition, current and future field laboratory testing standards will require the use of Wireless Ethernet which allows real time monitoring and process control from remote locations, electronic data transfer, and the ability to merge various Data Acquisition systems into a central command location the same as a LAN. This all allows for tighter control of the test process.

These Data Acquisition systems include Meteorological information systems, Video and Audio data collection systems, GPS, Timing, TSPI, and any status information or data channel

information contained within the SCADA system.

These SCADA systems, along with their associated hardware and architecture also must have the added benefit of being reusable for future testing. Once installed, these systems must have the capability to be easily modified to accommodate the multitude of different test

requirements, parameters, instrumentation, and test devices. They must also be easily relocated from one test site to another, be installed in a relatively short time period and take up a minimum of space which enables the greatest of cost efficiency and use of test resources.

2.2.6 Templates and Indirect Tags. Industry SCADA packages are required to have “cells”

which are graphical objects that can be used over and over in an application or copied to another

application. Changing the links in a cell needs to be fast and very easy. In addition to smaller graphical objects, entire windows can be used for multiple purposes by using scripting and indirect tags. In the case of an environmental control, for example, one window can be created and used as a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) tuning window for all the different PID loops with another window for data monitoring only.

2.2.7 Scripting. In industry standard SCADA systems, scripting is a powerful tool and is used for performing calculations or logic functions. Scripting gives more functionality with one button than just standard links. Scripting provides the user with much more functionality with recipes, alarms, redundancy, etc. Security features can also be programmed with scripting.

2.2.8 Communications. In most strictly data acquisition systems, clock-driven

communications are used. These clock-driven communications tie up Central Processing Unit (CPU) resources when the display is in use. Multiple display clients read the same data from the CPU multiple times, which further burdens the system and the controller.

Industry standard SCADA package drivers are interrupt-driven and do not use as much of the CPU time for communications. By configuring one CPU as a data server, data is read from the controller more efficiently than most other types of data acquisition systems.

2.2.9 Redundant displays. In a properly configured SCADA system, with scripting, the user has complete control over the behavior of redundant stations.

2.2.10 Historical trend data. Within industry SCADA packages, historical trending is

accomplished very efficiently, with smaller files and with little or no loading of the CPU. This efficiency is a prime reason for the development of the SCADA system by private industry.

2.2.11 Recipes. SCADA packages have tools and utilities built for creating and using recipes.

The recipes are in a comma separated variable file, which can be easily edited using Excel.

SCADA package recipe files are easier to create and manage than the standard data acquisition systems. With the SCADA package scripting ability, there is a greater control over recipe functionality.

2.2.12 Alarming. The SCADA systems alarms are generated from data in the database and do not cause an increase in communications to the CPU or controller. There is a greater alarm functionality in SCADA packages, more that can be done to display and report the alarms and scripting can access alarm information, so actions can be performed on alarm conditions. This is especially important where testing can cause life-threatening situations.