Teaching open standards for PLC programming

Author

Verwer, A.A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Manchester Metropolitan Univ., UK

fYear

1996

fDate

35150

Firstpage

42583

Lastpage

42589

Abstract

The need for standardisation in PLCs was first addressed in the 1970s. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) produced the first draft of a standard for programmable control systems, IEC 1131, in 1979. IEC 1131-3 is much more than just a standard for PLC programming languages, it also brings many well developed software engineering ideas into the realm of PLCs. The complexity of industrial control software is increasing exponentially and proper software engineering is essential for producing robust, reliable and reusable software. The technique developed at Manchester Metropolitan University for teaching PLC applications is to use simulated processes for which students develop and test their control programs. The simulations are written in one or more of the IEC standard languages and run on ISaGRAF on the simulated PLC

Keywords

control engineering computing; control engineering education; digital simulation; open systems; programmable controllers; programming languages; software standards; teaching; IEC 1131; ISaGRAF; Manchester Metropolitan University; PLC programming; digital simulation; industrial control; open standards; programming languages; software engineering; teaching;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

iet

Conference_Titel

Mechatronics in Education: Delivery of a New Engineering Discipline into the Workplace, IEE Colloquium on

Conference_Location

Manchester

Type

conf

DOI

10.1049/ic:19960482

Filename

542990