Light has long been used as a long-range signaling medium. While communication by light through open air is…
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At the next OSI Reference Model layer (layer 4) is a set of protocols specifying how reliable communication…
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In a manually-controlled process, a human operator directly actuates some form of final control element…
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Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
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Cyber-security seems to have its own vocabulary, ranging from unwieldy technical acronyms to slang terms…
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One of the great benefits of digital technology is the ability to communicate vast amounts of information over…
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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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An engineer named Bob Metcalfe conceived the idea of Ethernet in 1973, while working for the Xerox research…
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Imagine a major marathon race, where hundreds of runners gather in one place to compete. When the starting gun…
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An exciting development in industrial instrumentation is the WirelessHART radio communication standard,…
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These fortifications focus on human behavior rather than system design or component selection. In some ways…
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A completely different way of measuring liquid level in vessels is to bounce a traveling wave off the surface…
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I remember first learning about the world-wide Internet, and wondering what it actually looked like. The first…
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In the United States, the ANSI and IEEE organizations have standardized a set of numerical codes referring to…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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A bridge circuit is basically a pair of voltage dividers where the circuit output is taken as the difference…
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Every programmable logic controller must have some means of receiving and interpreting signals from real-world…
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There are multiple motives for compromising the security of an industrial control system, some of which…
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Many years ago, when I was first learning about electricity, I happened to discover a length of coaxial…
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A variety of technologies exist to measure the quantity of stored material in a vessel. For liquid…
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A unique form of technical diagram for describing the abstract functions comprising a control system (e.g. PID…
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Up until this point, we have explored various types of instrumentation diagram, each one making reference to…
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A technological advance introduced in the late 1980’s was HART, an acronym standing for Highway…
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Self-balancing mechanisms consisting solely of a baffle/nozzle detector coupled to a feedback bellows, while…
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The term “grid” refers to the conductors and equipment interconnecting power sources to power…
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The digital multimeter (DMM) is quite possibly the most useful tool in the instrument technician’s…
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Another category of control strategies involves the use of signal relays or function blocks with the ability…
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A machine in the broad sense of the word is any device designed to translate some form of energy into useful…
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In order for any PID controller to be practical, it must be able to do more than just implement the PID…
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A temperature switch is one detecting the temperature of some substance. Temperature switches often use…
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Most of these formulae appear in molecular chemical form rather than structural form. For example, ethanol…
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A very common form of on/off valve used for pneumatic and hydraulic systems alike is the solenoid valve. A…
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Some self-powered (4-wire) analog electronic transmitters are designed to behave as electrical loads rather…
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In addition to Ohm’s Law, we have a set of rules describing how voltages, currents, and resistances…
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“Feedforward” is a rather under-used control strategy capable of managing a great many types of…
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A chemical reaction resulting in a net release of energy is called exothermic. Conversely, a chemical reaction…
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Three-phase AC is the dominant mode of electric power generation and distribution in modern societies.…
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A sliding-stem valve body is one where the moving parts slide with a linear motion. Some examples of…
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Converting between disparate units of measurement is the bane of many science students. The problem is worse…
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The majority of flowmeter technologies operate on the principle of interpreting fluid flow based on the…
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Hydrogen ion activity in aqueous (water-solvent) solutions is a very important parameter for a wide variety of…
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One of the great benefits of digital technology is the ability to communicate vast amounts of information over…
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A powerful mathematical concept useful for analyzing practically any physical system – electrical…
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Valve actuators provide force to move control valve trim. For precise positioning of a control valve, there…
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All masses require force to accelerate (we can also think of this in terms of the mass generating a reaction…
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Many years ago, when I was first learning about electricity, I happened to discover a length of coaxial…
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The following animation shows how a radio-energy pulse travels down and then up the waveguide of a guided-wave…
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In order for any PID controller to be practical, it must be able to do more than just implement the PID…
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Every flow-measuring instrument exploits a physical principle to measure the flow rate of fluid stream.…
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An extremely important topic in engineering is that of transfer functions. Simply defined, a transfer function…
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Take for instance the problem of measuring fluid flow through a pipe. To the layperson, this may seem to be a…
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As we have seen, the concept of integration is finding the accumulation of one variable multiplied by another…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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A wise PLC programmer once told me that the first thing any aspiring programmer should learn about the PLC…
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The Law of Mass Conservation states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The Law of Energy…
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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, instrumentation safety may be broadly divided into two…
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A pressure switch is one detecting the presence of fluid pressure. Pressure switches often use diaphragms or…
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In November of 2007 a new computer virus was submitted to a virus scanning service. The purpose of this new…
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