CADETS HAVE MORE CONTROL OVER THEIR TRAINING AT SOUTH TYNESIDE COLLEGE

South Tyneside College, the National Nautical Centre of Excellence, has been expanding its marine engineering training facilities by installing a new control system to be used as an aid to teaching systems and fault finding for process controlled applications -- skills that could prove invaluable during electrical maintenance at sea.

The fully networked Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) system with Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) software will be used by a range of senior marine engineers, marine cadets, and service local industrial courses to learn how a fully networked control system performs.

The new controls are being installed in three separate workshops but can be operated from one central control room housing an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix 5000 system with an industrialised PC running the Allen-Bradley RSView operator interface software.

The operator interface communicates with the ControlLogix system through an ethernet network. Operators then have access to full plant diagnostics via information screens that can be selected from menus.

An industrial process has been chosen as one of the simulations that the system will manage. Students will learn to control a mixing process and ensure that the contents of three tanks are processed correctly in a fourth before being pumped to a fifth for despatch.

Graham Charlton, from the faculty of electrical and electronic engineering at South Tyneside College explained: The SCADA software provides a 'front-end graphical control for the operator. We have a simulated marine bilge pump system and actual motors driving the pumps. We are constructing a mimic panel to demonstrate full operation of the process and the software is designed to allow full replacement of the simulation with actual plant devices as the project progresses."

The new set-up also includes a FLEX I/O system that allows communication with the operator interface in the main control room through the three networks involved- ethernet, controlnet and devicenet.

The new equipment is all installed and is currently being tested and should be fully operational in time for the next academic year. Students on a variety of courses will be able to get to grips with the new systems, including the College Certificate in Marine Electrical Maintenance, control and instrumentation courses for marine cadets, and industry day courses in control and automation.

Graham added: This sort of training is vital to understand the processes and technology involved in the systems our students will deal with for real, whether they are cadets or on an industrial course. Everyone from marine cadets to chief engineers and those visiting us from local industry for extra training will experience this excellent hands-on opportunity."