Part I: Trouble shooting and loop tuning

Length of Course: Three days if held in a Johannesburg or Durban training centre. Five days if held in the client's plant.

Synopsis: This course teaches the fundamentals of practical process control including troubleshooting and optimisation of control systems. Particular emphasis is paid to solving problems that occur in many loops but about which very little formal knowledge has previously been available. Three days are spent in classroom lectures and workshops accompanied by analysis of real field test data and dynamic simulation. A further two days are spent optimising actual loops in the plant in the course held in the client's plant.

Who Should Attend: The course is designed for instrument technicians, control engineers, and other people responsible for the operation and maintenance of the plant control systems. The course will be very beneficial to people with a lot of previous experience in the control field, as well as beginners.

Objectives: Upon successful completion of the course the student will be able to:

• Determine the testing sequence to optimise each loop in a control system.
• Understand why loops often don't behave in the way they should, and what steps must be taken to rectify the problem.
• Perform control loop analysis tests to troubleshoot and tune feedback control systems for optimum performance.
• Understand and apply test techniques and control strategies needed to optimise various processes, including deadtime dominant loops, cascade controls, surge tank controls, and adaptive gain.
• Have much greater confidence in himself and in his own abilities to perform his job successfully.

Topics:

The role of various elements in the control loop

Operational characteristics

Understanding your brand of PID controller

The dynamics of different types of processes

Problems with final control elements

Loop analysis and testing

Hysteresis analysis

Non-linearity and solutions

Surge control

Ratio control

Examples of real world loop problems

Measuring principles in the digital world

Noise and how to deal with it

Loop tuning for optimum practical results

Filtering

To register for the course, download the registration form or contact Michael Brown Control Engineering on email michael.brown@mweb.co.za