Nonlinear process simulation and control using transputers

One of the obstacles to the more extensive use of nonlinear models in the control of highly nonlinear systems, such as chemical processing equipment, is the computational difficulty of solving the relevant nonlinear differential algebraic equations in real time. Transputer systems offer sufficient power to enable these equations to be handled rapidly and are now cheap enough to enable their implementation as dedicated control room equipment to be considered. Feedforward/feedback control of a nonlinear process, a distillation column, has been simulated on a Meiko transputer system to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The effective use of parallel computers requires that parallelism be exploited by choice of problem decomposition. A strategy which maximises parallelisation in the simulation of a distillation column is described.