The ECOSSE Control HyperCourse

Welcome

to the ECOSSE Control HyperCourse. I hope that you will find the material presented here both interesting and stimulating!

What is it?

Basically it is a course on control available on the WWW.

At Edinburgh the students have access to the WWW whenever they want. All chemical engineering subjects have taken advantage of this and most teaching material is available online. The control hypercourse takes this concept a step further and includes interactive simulations.

Why was it written?

First and foremost it was written to benefit the students at Edinburgh University studying chemical engineering. Now if a lecture is not understood they can go to the computer where the material may be presented in a different manner. Also the students can work at their own pace and review or preview material at any time. This is an excellent resource, especially at exam time.

Who is it for?

Primarily the material is to be used by students at Edinburgh as a followup to their lectures. However, it could also be used by other chemical engineering departments or process engineers in industry as a refresher course for those involved in the development or use of control systems.

Features of the Course

The course is written for process engineers in a language they will understand.
It is about controlling complete, real process, not idealised parts of imaginary processes.
It aims to simplify a complex task by providing a systematic approach and explicit guidelines.
It is not mathematical. Where mathematics is necessary, a straightforward numerical and computational approach will be used, rather than complicated algebra.
It will be useful both to students and to practising engineers.

What does it cover?

At present the course covers three years of undergraduate study. This work can be found in modules 1 to 3. These are intended to be a self contained introductory course and could be subtitled All You Really Need to Know about Process Control. All process engineers should become familiar with the concepts and techniques discussed here, because they are an integral part of understanding and designing processes, rather than specialist topics which may only occasionally be of importance to the working engineer.

Modules 4, 5, 6 and 7, which are in the process of being written will discuss advanced control techniques. This will include a brief resumé of classical methods in process control. They will be written very much with process engineers in mind, but some of the contributors have a classical or non-process control background. This section is intended to allow process engineers to use the knowledge gained from modules 1 to 3 to understand state-of-the-art techniques, judge their suitability for a given process application, and then to supervise their implementation by specialist control engineers.

How does it Work?

The course has been written in HTML, a HyperText Markup Language which allows links from page to page by simply clicking on an highlighted words. It incorporates images, sounds, movies and interactive sections to make the subject matter more interesting and therefore hopefully easier to understand.

The teaching material is presented to the students in a number of different ways:

Firstly there are theory sections which duplicate material from lectures and may also contain additional work for more able students.
Then there are casestudy sections which include worked examples and tutorial questions. In some cases the worked examples may be interactive. The student is given hints and comments as they work through the exercise, in response to answers to specific questions.
Finally there is The Virtual Control Laboratory which is a set of interactive simulations designed to convey specific points in process control. These are based on experiments in our own laboratory.

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