Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
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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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In the United States, the ANSI and IEEE organizations have standardized a set of numerical codes referring to…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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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 bridge circuit is basically a pair of voltage dividers where the circuit output is taken as the difference…
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An exciting development in industrial instrumentation is the WirelessHART radio communication standard,…
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Every programmable logic controller must have some means of receiving and interpreting signals from real-world…
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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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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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I remember first learning about the world-wide Internet, and wondering what it actually looked like. The first…
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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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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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A completely different way of measuring liquid level in vessels is to bounce a traveling wave off the surface…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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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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Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
Textbook
An engineer named Bob Metcalfe conceived the idea of Ethernet in 1973, while working for the Xerox research…
Textbook
These fortifications focus on human behavior rather than system design or component selection. In some ways…
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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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By definition, a source is a device delivering energy into a system, while a load is a device extracting…
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This animation shows the basic operation of a gas chromatograph, showing the separation of different molecular…
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Once while working as an instrument technician in an aluminum foundry, a mechanic asked me what it was that I…
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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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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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Disconnect Switches Disconnects are switches designed to isolate sections of a power system in case of damage…
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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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Many traditional flowmeter technologies respond to the volumetric flow rate of the moving fluid.…
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Capacitors store energy in electric fields, proportional to the square of voltage. Inductors store energy in…
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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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Tube, like pipe, is a hollow structure designed to provide an enclosed pathway for fluids to flow. In the case…
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Those familiar with industrial instrumentation will find much within the electric power industry remarkably…
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In reliability engineering, it is important to be able to quantity the reliability (or conversely, the…
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Labwork is an essential part of any science-based curriculum. Here, much improvement may be made over the…
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Some self-powered (4-wire) analog electronic transmitters are designed to behave as electrical loads rather…
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Volumes could be written about poor diagnostic technique. The following mistakes are not intended to comprise…
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Negative feedback systems, in general, tend to cause confusion for those first learning their fundamental…
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Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
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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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