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Motives for Compromising the Security of an Industrial Control System

Motives for Compromising the Security of an Industrial Control System

There are multiple motives for compromising the security of an industrial control system, some of which…


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Glossary of Cyber-security Terms

Glossary of Cyber-security Terms

Cyber-security seems to have its own vocabulary, ranging from unwieldy technical acronyms to slang terms…


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Basics of Bridge Circuits

Basics of Bridge Circuits

A bridge circuit is basically a pair of voltage dividers where the circuit output is taken as the difference…


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Glossary of Cyber-security Terms

Glossary of Cyber-security Terms

Cyber-security seems to have its own vocabulary, ranging from unwieldy technical acronyms to slang terms…


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Ultrasonic (Sound) Echo Level Measurement

Ultrasonic (Sound) Echo Level Measurement

A completely different way of measuring liquid level in vessels is to bounce a traveling wave off the surface…


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Introduction to Modbus

Introduction to Modbus

Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…


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Fiber Optic Data Communication

Fiber Optic Data Communication

Light has long been used as a long-range signaling medium. While communication by light through open air is…


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Examples of PLC Systems

Examples of PLC Systems

Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…


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Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

At the next OSI Reference Model layer (layer 4) is a set of protocols specifying how reliable communication…


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ANSI/IEEE Function Number Codes

ANSI/IEEE Function Number Codes

In the United States, the ANSI and IEEE organizations have standardized a set of numerical codes referring to…


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Chromatography: Methods, Detectors and Species

Chromatography: Methods, Detectors and Species

Imagine a major marathon race, where hundreds of runners gather in one place to compete. When the starting gun…


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Motives for Compromising the Security of an Industrial Control System

Motives for Compromising the Security of an Industrial Control System

There are multiple motives for compromising the security of an industrial control system, some of which…


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Open-ended, Shorted and Properly Terminated Transmission Lines

Open-ended, Shorted and Properly Terminated Transmission Lines

Many years ago, when I was first learning about electricity, I happened to discover a length of coaxial…


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Digital Data Communication Theory

Digital Data Communication Theory

One of the great benefits of digital technology is the ability to communicate vast amounts of information over…


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WirelessHART Radio Communication Standard

WirelessHART Radio Communication Standard

An exciting development in industrial instrumentation is the WirelessHART radio communication standard,…


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Input/Output (I/O) Capabilities of PLCs

Input/Output (I/O) Capabilities of PLCs

Every programmable logic controller must have some means of receiving and interpreting signals from real-world…


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Supervisory Control

Supervisory Control

In a manually-controlled process, a human operator directly actuates some form of final control element…


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Design-based Fortifications

Design-based Fortifications

A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…


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Policy-based Fortifications

Policy-based Fortifications

These fortifications focus on human behavior rather than system design or component selection. In some ways…


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Digital PID Controllers

Digital PID Controllers

The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…


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What is Internet Protocol (IP)?

What is Internet Protocol (IP)?

I remember first learning about the world-wide Internet, and wondering what it actually looked like. The first…


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Ethernet networks: Repeaters, Cabling and Switching Hubs

Ethernet networks: Repeaters, Cabling and Switching Hubs

An engineer named Bob Metcalfe conceived the idea of Ethernet in 1973, while working for the Xerox research…


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Vibration Monitoring Hardware

Vibration Monitoring Hardware

The following photograph shows a large air blower in a wastewater treatment facility equipped with a…


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Digital PID Algorithms

Digital PID Algorithms

Instrument technicians should not have to concern themselves over the programming details internal to digital…


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Laminar Flowmeters

Laminar Flowmeters

A unique form of differential pressure-based flow measurement deserves its own section in this flow…


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Ladder Diagram (LD) Structure Commands

Ladder Diagram (LD) Structure Commands

The simple PLC ladder diagram (LD) commands consist of contacts and coils, arranged in sequences that mimic…


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Proportional-only Control

Proportional-only Control

Imagine a liquid-level control system for a vessel, where the position of a level-sensing float directly sets…


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Root Mean Square (RMS) Quantities

Root Mean Square (RMS) Quantities

It is often useful to express the amplitude of an alternating quantity such as voltage or current in terms…


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The International System of Units

The International System of Units

The very purpose of physics is to quantitatively describe and explain the physical world in as few terms as…


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Different PID Equations

Different PID Equations

For better or worse, there are no fewer than three different forms of PID equations implemented in modern PID…


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FOUNDATION Fieldbus H1 Protocol Physical Layer

FOUNDATION Fieldbus H1 Protocol Physical Layer

Layer 1 of the OSI Reference Model is where we define the “physical” elements of a digital data…


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Digital Data Communication Theory

Digital Data Communication Theory

One of the great benefits of digital technology is the ability to communicate vast amounts of information over…


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Ladder Diagram (LD) Programming Contacts and Coils

Ladder Diagram (LD) Programming Contacts and Coils

In the United States, the most common language used to program PLCs is Ladder Diagram (LD), also known as…


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Circuit Failure Analysis

Circuit Failure Analysis

Perhaps the most valuable skill an instrument technician can possess is the ability to efficiently diagnose…


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Rotating Phasor in Three-dimensional Form

Rotating Phasor in Three-dimensional Form

The following animation shows a rotating phasor in three-dimensional form. The phasor rotates in a complex…


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Pressure Switches

Pressure Switches

A pressure switch is one detecting the presence of fluid pressure. Pressure switches often use diaphragms or…


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General Problem-solving Techniques

General Problem-solving Techniques

A variety of problem-solving techniques have been presented for students over the years which are all helpful…


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Common Educational Fallacies

Common Educational Fallacies

When I began teaching full-time in 1998, most of what I thought I understood about good teaching was actually…


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On/off Electric Motor Control Circuits

On/off Electric Motor Control Circuits

An electric motor is often used as a discrete control element in a control system if driving a pump, conveyor…


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Valve Failure Modes

Valve Failure Modes

An important design parameter of a control valve is the position it will “fail” to if it loses…


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Control Valve Actuators

Control Valve Actuators

The purpose of a control valve actuator is to provide the motive force to operate a valve mechanism. Both…


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Introduction to Capacitors and Capacitance

Introduction to Capacitors and Capacitance

Capacitance Any two electrical conductors separated by an insulating medium possess the characteristic called…


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