Development of virtual plant over embedded system

Abstract

This document describes the development of a virtual plant prototype inside a Raspberry-pi. The goal is to have low-cost, educational-use equipment that can emulate behavior of 3 physical systems: temperature controlled system, water tank level and angular velocity. The applicability of disturbances to the studied systems was also considered within the code.Parallel to the calculation of the instantaneous value produced by the difference equation developed for each system, the screen of the prototype shows an animation similar to those used in: a SCADA system, Visual Basic, LabView or others.The user can choose the FT of the system to be controlled by selecting from drop-down lists: one of the three systems mentioned and certain characteristics that modify the FT of the system under study.In total there are 27 FT that can be used, additionally the code developed in Python has been structured in a modular way to add new FT and animations corresponding to the system to be developed. The prototype has been tested and its results compared with the equivalent physical system, with an average of 95% similarity for each system. Functional tests were also carried out with digital controllers, including a proportional control in Siemens S7-1200 PLC.