Top 5 Control Engineering articles, January 12-18: PID loop tuning advice, control engineers and management, PLC and DCS programming, more

Articles about PID loop tuning advice from an expert; 7 things control engineers should know about management; PLC and DCS programming; how burner combustion control systems work; and the top Control Engineering articles for 2014 were Control Engineering’s five most clicked articles from last week, January 12-18.

By Chris Vavra January 19, 2015

Control Engineering Top 5 most read articles online, for Jan. 5-11 covered PID loop tuning advice from an expert; 7 things control engineers should know about management; PLC and DCS programming; how burner combustion control systems work; and the top Control Engineering articles for 2014. Link to each article below.

1. Learning PID loop tuning from an expert

Hands-on experience helps accelerate the PID learning curve. 

2. 7 things control engineers should know about management

How to communicate effectively with management and accelerate your career: Engineers should know these 7 things about management today. Don’t wait for others to delegate the needed resources or complain that they haven’t.

3. Improve PLC and DCS programming with a mental model

Develop a mental model to address real-time programming, which differs from web development or classical programming. Base real-time programmable logic controller (PLC) and distributed control system (DCS) programs on models of functional programming, encapsulation, hierarchy decomposition, and petri nets. Do not accept unstructured and poorly designed PLC and DCS code. 

4. How do burner combustion control systems work?

To understand how to tune gas and/or oil burners, it helps to first understand how and why they work the way they do. 

5. Top Control Engineering articles for 2014

Think Again: What noncontrol people should know about control engineers, inside the competition to create the first PLC, PID tuning for a faster response, the future of PLCs, Microsoft Windows XP, and System Integrator Giants were among the top 20 Control Engineering stories posted during 2014. 

The list was developed using CFE Media’s web analytics for stories viewed on controleng.com, January 12-18, for articles published within the last two months.

– Chris Vavra, production editor, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com.


Author Bio: Chris Vavra is web content manager for CFE Media and Technology.