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Abstract- Industrial automation is constantly expanding, and, a predetermined operating program of the elevator.
regarding their control more and more solutions are presently Depending on the application, the program may be different
developing on the market. These include older methods like
Petri nets (1966), and standardized languages, which are for sure. Examples of usages of such an elevator are the
commonly used in the field of programmable logic controllers operation within a library (take from or put back on the
(PLCs). The paper presents the Ladder Diagram programming shelves the requested books), a restaurant or a hotel (food and
language, that is one of the standardized languages, and one of drink orders and/or laundry transportation), a manufacturing
the most widely used for industrial automation systems. In these unit or a warehouse (for logistic purposes to receive or send
circumstances, it is useful to make a comparison between the
two methods, drawing out the advantages and the disadvantages various parts or packages). A detailed comparison should take
of each solution separately. Petri nets benefit from the existence into account not only the advantages offered by each of the
of a highly developed mathematical support and high flexibility two methods, but also should consider the time required for
in analyzing all elements that can influence the conduct of an the program development, testing and implementation and not
event, which is a major advantage. On the other hand, the lastly the total running time of the program. In the case of an
Ladder Diagram language, which corresponds to the standard
IEC 61131, is easy to use and implement, regardless of the industrial application, whatever the size of the application
hardware structure used by the manufacturer. Also, this method large or small, it is important to evaluate how difficult it is to
allows both ON-line and OFF-line simulations of the automation achieve a maintenance program and hence the operation of
process operation. Finally, an educational platform is also the entire process, the cost generated by this operation, the
presented. total service time, which in fact it is a delay without revenue.
Keywords: PLC, Petri net, Ladder Diagram The application represents the development of the control
for a freight elevator that has to operate on three levels. The
I. INTRODUCTION designed and manufactured educational platform is shown in
The paper aims to analyze two solutions for the control Fig. 1.
design of a process. Due to general applicability of the both
methods to any industrial process automation, as an example
application a freight elevator has been considered.
Automating the process involves actually implementing the
command and the control operation of a freight elevator that
operates between three levels. The application
implementation based on the Ladder Diagram programming
language for a programmable logic controller can be achieved
in two ways [1]. The first method, which is simpler, it is not
necessarily the one that offers the best overall performance.
This consists in the development of the application program
directly into the programming environment. A second
solution is to design and simulate the application operation
using Petri nets [2]. This solution is a very flexible because it
allows for subsequent implementation also using a software
environment in accordance to IEC 61131 standard, being this
either Ladder Diagram, or in some cases Functional Block
Diagram, Instruction List or Structured Text.
II. PROCESS AUTOMATION
Fig. 1. The educational platform for the process automation of an elevator.
For comparison, be it not a throughout comparison, a
freight elevator control has been considered as an automation
At each level there is provided an operator panel consisting
process example. The implementation has been performed for
in push buttons and indicator lamps. On the panel there are
TABLE I
INPUTS FOR THE CONTROL SYSTEM
IN 01 Level Sensor 1
IN 02 Level Sensor 2
IN 03 Level Sensor 3
IN 04 STOP button
IN 05 First level button
IN 06 Second level button
IN 07 Third level button
IN 08 Upper end-track
IN 09 Lower end-track
IN 10 Cancel acoustic/optic signal
IN 11 Cancel error signal Fig. 4. PLC implementation hardware view.
representation but with the possibility to group together more
Fig. 5 shows a part of the application program. It can be
activities that will form a stage of the application process.
noticed that some lines are colored in red. The red color
The Petri network is an oriented graphical representation.
means that the program is running in OFF-line mode. The
This type of representation of the industrial processes has
major advantage of this method (developing the application
been developed by the German mathematician Carl Adam
program directly in the Ladder Diagram language) is that it
PETRI and it has been presented for the first time in his PhD
allows for quick and easy visual debugging of all possible
thesis held at the Technische Universitt Darmstadt -
malfunctions of the program while this runs in simulation
Germany [4].
mode and thus protecting the real world application from
The nodes of a Petri network represent the stages/states of
programming damages.
the process. The arcs that link the nodes represent the
transitions, and they model the conditions that must be met by
the process in order to move from one stage to another. Such
a network is exemplified in Fig. 6.