Fully integrated control for a rotor over-speed testing facility

The paper describes the fully digital control system of the new facility for rotor testing of Ansaldo Energia at Genova. This laboratory is used to drive at over-speed the turbine and generator rotors produced by the Ansaldo Factory. This operation is necessary to balance the rotors before their installation and commissioning. The control system of the installation was designed to exploit at the higher degree the possibilities offered by the modern digital technologies, i.e. intelligent field devices and fieldbus based networks. The system has not a single conventional input/output card. Three specialised fieldbuses are used: Profibus DP for controlling the electrical system and the main drive, Proribus PA for all the transmitters and actuators, and AS-i for all the on/off signals in the field. A higher level network for supervision, report generation, and connection with the factory IT system is based on Ethernet. After a brief description of the system, the paper focuses on two main topics: the time/cost analysis of the engineering and the commissioning stages compared with a conventional solution, the operational performances of the system and the support for maintenance. A specific section discusses the system safety and describes the solutions adopted to guarantee personnel safety and machinery integrity.