A Dynamic Connection Scheme for User Interface of Process Control System in Offshore Plant

In offshore plant, the process control system manages process variables and interfaces with all plant utilities. It consists of workstations, controllers and various field interface devices. Plant operators deal with a large variety of process variables using the Human-Machine Interface application (HMI) in operator stations, which is a software program to interact with plant operators and to communicate with the system server. In large-scale processes, the process control system has not only multiple system servers for system availability but also many operator stations for plant operators to manage easily the process. The main focus of our work is in a connection scheme of the HMI for linking to one of system servers without additional configuration works. The proposed scheme is adopted the fundamental concepts of autonomic computing and supports fault-tolerant and load-balanced features because it provides a dynamic connection according to the status of system servers. We implement the module for the proposed scheme as agent between the system server and the HMI, and then incorporate it into the process control system. Finally, the case study shows that the proposed scheme can provide reliable connection with system servers and efficient load status of system servers.