The laboratory supports simulation of automated process complexes (APCs), including thermal-energy cyber-physical systems. Students and doctoral researchers use it to study process automation and develop controller and supervisory functions for automated control systems. The work supports course projects, bachelor’s and master’s theses, and doctoral research.
An APC combines a controlled process with an automated control system. Simulation reproduces the controller and supervisory functions using software models, or digital twins, of the process. Functional simulation models the behaviour of a dynamic system; structural simulation models how its components interact. These methods let engineers test and tune a control system when the physical process is unavailable or too complex for direct mathematical analysis. They can be used during design, implementation, commissioning, replication and modernisation.
The laboratory offers hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and software-in-the-loop (SIL) configurations. In HIL, a physical controller runs the control logic and the process model runs on the controller; the operator interface is the controller’s HMI panel. In SIL, the process model runs in Matlab Simulink, controller functions run in the CoDeSys soft PLC, and supervisory functions run in InduSoft Web Studio SCADA.
The equipment includes a fixed Unitronics OPLC Vision HIL bench, mobile Unitronics OPLC UniStream benches and virtual computer-based benches using CoDeSys 3.5. Each bench is configured as a software-and-hardware simulator and an engineering training environment for developing and tuning control systems against a process model.
Related technical detail is available in the laboratory-complex description, including the HIL/SIL diagrams, digital-twin repository, Unitronics simulator configurations, Matlab Simulink, CoDeSys, InTouch Edge HMI, OPC/OPC-UA, PCOM/OPC and Modbus TCP data links, and the Simio production-logistics simulator.