Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
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Light has long been used as a long-range signaling medium. While communication by light through open air is…
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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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An exciting development in industrial instrumentation is the WirelessHART radio communication standard,…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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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 bridge circuit is basically a pair of voltage dividers where the circuit output is taken as the difference…
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Cyber-security seems to have its own vocabulary, ranging from unwieldy technical acronyms to slang terms…
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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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At the next OSI Reference Model layer (layer 4) is a set of protocols specifying how reliable communication…
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Every programmable logic controller must have some means of receiving and interpreting signals from real-world…
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In a manually-controlled process, a human operator directly actuates some form of final control element…
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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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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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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 engineer named Bob Metcalfe conceived the idea of Ethernet in 1973, while working for the Xerox research…
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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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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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Linearity of Measurement Instruments The purpose of calibration is to ensure the input and output of an…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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Some problem-solving techniques are unique to quantitative problems, involving mathematical calculations. In…
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A simple control system drawn in block diagram form looks like this: Information from the measuring device…
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Any power grid large enough to meet the demand of an entire nation must have multiple generators drawing from…
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Valves can experience a number of problems, most of them either preventable or repairable. These problems can…
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To better understand the design and operation of self-balancing pneumatic mechanisms, it is helpful to examine…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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The following animation shows how the “rotating” magnetic field of a three-phase AC induction…
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Binary patterns are not just able to represent numerical values. Given a standardized code, they may represent…
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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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The reason why a pneumatic control valve’s stem position corresponds linearly to the amount of air…
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Lipták, Béla G. et al., Instrument Engineers’ Handbook – Process Measurement and Analysis Volume I,…
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The fundamental principle of electromagnetism is that an electric current will create a magnetic field at…
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A control strategy similar to ratio control is relation control. This is similar to ratio control in that a…
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“Radio” systems use electromagnetic fields to communicate information over long distances through…
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Every programmable logic controller must have some means of receiving and interpreting signals from real-world…
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The purpose of a control valve actuator is to provide the motive force to operate a valve mechanism. Both…
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Visualizing the actions of P, I, and D tuning parameters using graphs is extremely useful in predicting the…
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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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There are many process control applications in the industry where it is desirable to have multiple control…
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An electromechanical relay is an electrical switch actuated by an electromagnet coil. As switching devices,…
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The majority of flowmeter technologies operate on the principle of interpreting fluid flow based on the…
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Current is the name we give to the motion of electric charges from a point of high potential to a point of low…
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The advent of “smart” field instruments containing microprocessors has been a great advance for…
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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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An important performance parameter for transmitter instruments is something often referred to as turndown or…
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As a general rule, high achievement only takes place in an atmosphere of high expectations. Sometimes these…
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PID control can be a confusing concept to understand. Here, a brief summary of each term within PID (P. I, and…
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The next level of detail is the Process and Instrument Diagram, or P&ID. Here, we see a “zooming…
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A flow switch is one detecting the flow of some fluid through a pipe. Flow switches often use…
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Perhaps the most confusing aspect of discrete sensors is the definition of a sensor’s normal status.…
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Learning from reading printed text is a kind of problem-solving activity it is own right. The problem is how…
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A vertical column of fluid generates a pressure at the bottom of the column owing to the action of gravity on…
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Sometimes we encounter a diversity of instrument signal standards in one control system. Such is the case with…
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Impedance in a series circuit is the orthogonal sum of resistance and reactance: \[Z = \sqrt{R^2 + (X_L -…
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Many liquid substances undergo a process whereby their constituent molecules split into positively and…
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The term “grid” refers to the conductors and equipment interconnecting power sources to power…
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An variable-area flowmeter is one where the fluid must pass through a restriction whose area increases with…
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