3. • DCS System – Level 0
• This level contains the field devices such as flow and
temperature sensors, and final control elements, such as
control valves.
• DCS System – Level 1
• This level contains the marshalling cabinets where the field
termination takes place. Also houses the intrinsic safety
barriers, relays, Terminal blocks, Isolators etc. from here
the signal travels from the Junction boxes wherein the
signals are paired and received from the appropriate
sections in the field area.
4. • DCS System – Level 2
• This level contains the system cabinet which is
designed to accommodate power supply,
controller and I/O cards. The field signals will be
digitally processed by the I/o cards and sent to
the controller for further digital processing.
• This part will be located in the top most part of
the cabint and will be brain of the automatic
system.
5. • DCS System – Level 3
• This level consists of visual disply unit or
computer, is the operator interface. It is
production control level, which directly
control the process. Plant operational
schematics are displayed. Alarm and interlock
cause and effect diagrams are displayed in
different pages.
6. System Cabinets
• In system cabinet, all electronic modules will be
installed like processor cards (CPU), input modules,
output modules, serial communication cards, power
supply modules, rack to rack inter-communiacation
modules, fieldbus cards, profibus cards, modbus cards.
• Main types of input modules are analog input (AI)
cards, digital input (DI) cards. The number of IO
channels will vary depends on the user selection of
these cards like 8 channel, 12 channel, 16 channel &
32 channel.
• Similarly output modules are analog output (AO) cards,
digital output (DO) cards.
7. Marshalling Cabinets
• Marshalling cabinets shall be used to
terminate all field cables as well as for
grouping of various signals from the field
devices properly tagged.
• Sometimes different marshalling cabinets can
be allocated based on type of signals like
analog input/output signals, digital inputs,
digital output and relays.
8. Operator WorkStation
• The operator workstations are used for monitoring
all system operations and for effecting control
actions and parameter adjustments.
• There are normally multiple operator workstations,
each of which contains all of the process graphic
displays and historical trend displays for the system.
• Some of the operations performed through the
Operator workstations are listed below;
– Logging on and off the system using passwords and user
names
– Invoking process displays to view the operations
throughout the system
9. – Invoking process displays to view the operations
throughout the system
– Effecting control modes for various equipment in the
system; for example, Manual and Automatic modes,
placing equipment in or out of service
– Changing setpoint parameters, with appropriate security
allowance
– Effecting manual control actions for equipment, such as
start/stop and open/close
– Viewing historical trend displays and transferring data to
other files for exporting
– Viewing the current alarm summary to identify alarm
conditions requiring attention.
– Viewing the alarm/event summary to view the
chronological series of events.
10. Engineering WorkStation
• To build graphics using the graphic builder programme.
• The configure control loops/monitoring loops
• To assign I/Os to various I/O modules during generation of application
software.
• To configure shutdown logic/sequence logic.
• To write/edit user written program in higher level languages.
• To download the generated application software to various system
nodes. To generate “self documentation” i.e. it should be possible to
store the generated information on a CD as well as to enable user to
take a printout of the system configuration.
• To emulate generated control loops/scheme/graphics, etc. before it is
downloaded to any control processor or operator stations.
• The graphic and database equalization of all the operator station shall
be performed from engineering station with a single command. It
should not require manual copy/paste intervention by user.
11. Switch
• A switch is a intelligent device on network.
• A switch is a device in a computer network that
connects other devices together.
• Multiple data cables are plugged into a switch to enable
communication between different networked devices.
• Switches manage the flow of data across a network by
transmitting a received network packet only to the one
or more devices for which the packet is intended.
• Each networked device connected to a switch can be
identified by its network address, allowing the switch to
direct the flow of traffic maximizing the security and
efficiency of the network.
12. Communication Media and Protocols
• Communication media consists of transmission cable to
transmitt the data such as coaxial cables, copper wires,
fiber optic cables and sometimes it might be wireless.
• Communication protocols selected depends on the
number of devices to be connected to this network.
• In DCS, two or more communication protocols are used
in between two or more areas such as between field
control devices and distributed controllers and other
one between distributed controllers and supervisory
control stations such as operating and engineering
stations.