Control Engineering hot topics, October 2019

Control Engineering's most clicked articles in October 2019 included stories about the Engineers' Choice finalists, PLC naming conventions, digital engineering practices, RPC and model-based control, and more. Miss something? You can catch up here.

By Chris Vavra November 1, 2019

Hot topics in Control Engineering, for October 2019, included the Engineers’ Choice finalists, PLC naming conventions, digital engineering practices, RPC and model-based control, and more. These are based on the top 10 most read articles online in Control Engineering October. Links to each article below.

1. 2020 Engineers’ Choice Finalists

The official ballot is open for voting for Control Engineering North American print and digital edition subscribers, for a limited time. Cast your vote using CFE Media’s New Products for Engineers platform at www.controleng.com/NPE.

2. PLC tag and address naming conventions

Control programming tutorial: Learn about tag templates, common factory automation tag abbreviations, process control tag abbreviations, and five tag and address naming tips.

3. Digital engineering practices enhance technologies of tomorrow

Digitalization: By integrating digital, physical and virtual realities, digital engineering redefines product development and manufacturing. Digital engineering accelerates development of next-generation smart products, services and operations.

4. Advantages of RPC and limits of model-based control

Part 3: Rate-predictive control, an alternative algorithm to proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and model-based control, can provide single-loop control. See three RPC advantages and two model-based control limitations.

5. Safety tips on SCCR for industrial control panels, industrial machinery

How to determine short-circuit current rating (SCCR) and avoid misapplications. When the industrial control panel or industrial machinery does not have an adequate SCCR for the available short-circuit (fault) current, an electrical hazard exists.

6. Smart Factory Web Testbed: From concept to reality

The Smart Factory Web Testbed aims to set up a marketplace for industrial production that comprises a web-based platform to allow factories to offer production capabilities and share resources to improve order fulfillment in a more flexible way than is currently possible with available technology.

7. OOIP Part 3: interfaces and methods

Interfaces and methods used in object-oriented industrial programming (OOIP) help deliver productivity of object-oriented programming (OOP) without the complexity. Because plants and equipment are assembled from objects, it’s logical that their control programming should be, too.

8. New ways to increase productivity with smart systems

Intelligent pneumatics offer flexibility in the age of Industry 4.0, and technology advances such as cyber-physical systems (CPSs) can help valves achieve greater connectivity and intelligence.

9. Water, wastewater industry is going digital and getting smarter

The water and wastewater industry is improving digitalization and automation with smarter sensors designed to make operations safer.

10. Diamond-based quantum sensor fabricated on a silicon chip

MIT researchers have fabricated a diamond-based quantum sensor on a silicon chip. The advance, called a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, could pave the way toward low-cost, scalable hardware for quantum computing, sensing, and communication.

On Mondays, see the top 5 articles of the prior week.

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


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