Plant model generation for PLC simulation

This paper reports an automated procedure for constructing a plant model for PLC simulation. Since PLC programs contain only the control logic without information on the plant model, it is necessary to build the corresponding plant model to perform the simulation. Conventionally, a plant model for PLC simulation has been constructed manually, which requires much effort and in-depth knowledge of the simulation. As a remedy for this problem, we propose an automated procedure for generating a plant model from the symbol table of a PLC program. To do so, we propose a naming rule for PLC symbols so that the symbol names include sufficient information on the plant model. By analysing such symbol names, we extract a plant model automatically. The proposed methodology has been implemented and test runs performed.