Communication between Matlab/Simulink and ABB Advant Control Builder

Sammanfattning:

Possibilities to simulate control systems can be very useful. During the development of a control system, simulations can verify that the implemented algorithms work as expected. Smaller parts of the implementation can be tested before they are put together to a complete control system. In an existing plant simulation can be used for optimization of the control system and control parameters can be tuned without affecting the real process.

The goal of this thesis has been to enable communication between Advant Control Builder and Matlab/Simulink. Advant Control Builder is a product developed by ABB, used for design and development of control systems. Matlab is a program for mathematical computation, and Simulink is a toolbox to Matlab that enables simulation of mathematical systems. Matlab and Simulink are developed by Mathworks. The communication is to be used for simulation of control systems and the processes that the system controls. The control system is created in Advant Control Builder and the process is modeled in Simulink.

A way to access data in the Advant Control Builder is through an OPC server, where OPC stands for OLE for Process Control. To enable communication between the OPC server and Matlab we have implemented a gateway. The gateway is implemented in C++ and can be seen as a link between the OPC server and Matlab. The communication between the gateway and the OPC server is built on COM (Component Object Model), and the communication between the gateway and Matlab is built on ActiveX. For exchange of data between Matlab and Simulink, we have implemented functions in Simulink that writes and reads data from Matlab workspace.