Published 14-11-2018

PLC IMPROVES FAILSAFE CONDITION MONITORING

14-11-2018

ABB has launched the world’s first safety PLC with integrated condition monitoring, in order to improve overall functional safety of various applications to global safety standards and reduce manual inspection and maintenance.

Failsafe condition monitoring complements standard noncritical condition monitoring, enabling many more applications to feature functional safety standards. Examples include monitoring the brakes of automated vehicles or mobile machines, enabling longer intervals between inspections, and precisely measuring vibrations with frequencies up to 20kHz in centrifuges and wind turbines, avoiding spontaneous critical failures or collapse.

Failsafe condition monitoring, together with predictive maintenance, provides early warning and prevents machine breakdown and the financial consequences of stopping production. For example, safely limited speed mode activation based on feedback from fail-safe condition monitoring can be implemented instead of a safe emergency stop, when it is permitted in the application.

The modular architecture of ABB’s AC500-S Safety PLC enables the combination of the PLC’s failsafe and condition monitoring units. Safety functions up to SIL CL 2 (IEC 62061), SIL 2 (IEC 61511) and PL d (ISO 13849-1) can be implemented with failsafe condition monitoring.

A predefined safety signal can be saved within the safety PLC’s 120Kbyte flash memory. Signals from the application can then be compared, and if the difference exceeds the allowed range, the safety reaction is triggered.

Using the SM560-S-FD-4 Safety CPU and CM589-PNIO-4 Profinet IO device ensures that the safe evaluation result can be exchanged from one fail-safe condition monitoring system to multiple safety controllers, including third parties, using Profinet/Profisafe. This enables implementation of the full machine emergency stop or plant-wide emergency stop function, whenever required.

In general, condition monitoring using ABB’s AC500 PLC provides easy integration with all kinds of machinery systems, enabling precise management of an application’s real-time condition. This provides more efficient machines, predictable performance and significant reductions in maintenance costs.

Whether stand-alone condition monitoring or integrated into a machine or process control, the AC500 is suited to build optimised, self-analysing automation solutions that simultaneously perform condition monitoring, control, protection, safety and data logger functions with one controller. It is simple to use, maintain, adapt or expand.

Planned maintenance rather than spontaneous repair ensures predictable performance. Approaching damage is identified early, costs in maintenance and lost production time are reduced and plant availability is increased.

ABB Australia
1800 222 435
www.abbaustralia.com.au

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