Project Details

[Return to Previous Page]

PLC Simulator

Company: Constellation Energy Generation LLC

Major(s):
Primary: ME
Secondary: CMPEN
Optional: EE

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: YES

This project is intended as a benchtop simulator using real-world Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) encountered at Peach Bottom Clean Energy Center for nuclear operations. The simulator will be a working ‘level control loop’ where water can be pushed to maintain level in a tank from a controller. An Engineer or other technical person can ‘play’ with the PID (Proportional-Integral-Differential) values using the vendor manual to give the Design Engineer detailed knowledge to develop Work Instructions to be written. This is also intended to be used to aid troubleshooting and train new engineers exposed to equipment. This simulator will be situated on a benchtop for PSU Student team will be provided the PLC (and some other key components from Constellation) and then create an interface that mimics what is experienced in the field. PSU Team is encouraged to think creatively to design, procure, assemble the bench top version that allows for interactive intuition building for PID control loops. Therefore, this may require transparent components and tubing, for example. A separate 'digital twin' is also desired such that the PLC could interact with a purely digital environment. This could be in the form of a 100% computer simulation software program that has a GUI (graphical user interface) that mimics the PLC inputs and mimics the outputs also graphically.