A complete programming framework for process control education

This paper presents the programming features that are desirable in Process Simulation and Control Education Software. These programming features facilitate the understanding of the control subject by showing the effect of physical parameters in dynamic systems. These software features also deal with data acquisition through different hardware systems in an effective and simple way. Data acquisition is important not only to bring process variables to the controller, but also for system identification and off-line model-base control design. A complete programming language allows a user to simulate the controller performance, and later implement it. All these tasks are expected to use the same programming framework for smooth transition between design and implementation of a model-based controller. An air heater case study is used to illustrate the importance of having a friendly software/hardware programming framework.