Distributed control loop performance monitoring architecture

Control Loop Performance Assessment (CLPA) is an emerging field where the evaluation of the controller signals is used to monitor plant performance. Recent advances suggest that CLPA can contribute to maintenance and asset management when integrated with process and condition monitoring techniques. Such integration widens the scope of CLPA but also puts a heavy burden on the communication lines originally designed for control purposes only. This paper describes a cost effective architecture that may be implemented to work in real-time without overloading the existing communication channels. A software model is described using this distributed and hierarchical architecture. The methodology has been implemented and tested on a process test rig and the results are evaluated with respect to overall system performance improvement.