Techniques Used to Design Reliable Control Systems. A Case Study: Electrical Geothermal Plant from the University of Oradea, Romania

Abstract

The demands placed upon control systems in respect to reliability continue to increase as these systems become integrated into a wide variety of safety-critical applications. For these categories of applications, it is essential to be able to guarantee that all critical processing is accomplished accurately and on time Adan and Magalhaes and Ramamritham (1998).
Consequently, the increasing complexity of the real-time control systems demands for new techniques that can be applied during all the development phases of the system. This paper presents a set of steps, concepts and criteria that can be used for critical real time process control design; consequently, an increased reliability can be achieved Irwin (1996).
An example of how these concepts were used in order to design a highly reliable real-time control system is presented using a case study: the electrical geothermal plant from the University of Oradea. The paper outlines the fact that the proposed techniques address one of the most important issues regarding real-time control systems design: reliability. It also provides a structured, disciplined and highly visible development Puchol and Mok (1998).