Self-Healing Process Control with Redundant Logic and Memory
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Solution Overview
Problem
Process control systems in industrial automation face challenges in self-healing from transitory faults, such as bus faults on memory lines, which require manual intervention and disrupt automatic control operations.
Innovation Solution
A self-healing control system that monitors logic and memory blocks for faults, swaps impacted subsets with redundant components, disables the faulty units, and performs automatic repairs, enabling the system to maintain or restore full redundancy and automatic operation without human intervention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual intervention is used to replace faulty control devices, then system reliability is restored, but loss of time occurs due to manual replacement procedures
Solution Approach 1:
The system maintains a hot standby controller that is pre-configured and ready to immediately take over control functions when a fault is detected in the active controller, eliminating the time required for manual replacement procedures
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically detects controller faults and performs self-healing by switching to the standby controller without requiring manual intervention, thereby restoring reliability while minimizing downtime
2Reliability
If redundancy is implemented to handle faults, then system reliability improves, but device complexity increases due to additional hardware
Solution Approach 1:
The standby controller is designed to perform multiple functions: it can serve as a backup for the active controller, and when switched to active mode, it can handle various control tasks, thereby reducing the need for dedicated single-purpose components
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using complex dedicated hardware for redundancy, the system uses a simplified copy of the controller architecture that can be easily replicated and switched between active and standby states
3Device complexity
If the system operates in non-redundant mode to reduce complexity, then device complexity decreases, but reliability deteriorates as a second fault causes loss of automatic control
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts its operational mode based on fault conditions, transitioning between single-controller and dual-controller configurations, allowing it to maintain reliability when needed while reducing complexity during normal operation
Data Source
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AI summary
An implementation is for one or more hardware-based non-transitory memory devices storing computer-readable instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors disposed in a computing device, cause the computing device to monitor a logic block and a memory block to detect a fault condition, determine a subset of the logic block or the memory block that is impacted by the fault condition, and perform at least one action on the logic block and the memory block.