Use of Ethernet communications for real-time control systems in the metals industry

This paper introduces and completes the material presented in the tutorial “Automation and real-time simulation of steelmaking processes” and discusses the use of industrial protocols, based on IEEE 802.3 standard for data exchange between the layers of a real-time based automation system. Modern automation platform needs to replace legacy field bus, for drive and remote I/O, based on RS485 standard and the communication between the control systems, with Ethernet management. This improvement allows an increase in performance of the control system and makes the recovery of diagnostic information easier. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the application of modern Ethernet communications to a real-time based automation platform for the metals industry.