New control laboratory using parallel programming

• Autores: Sebastián Dormido Canto, José Sánchez Moreno
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 24, no. Extra 6, 2008, págs. 1170-1179
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper discusses the viability of using parallel processing methods to solve control algorithms in real time in the field of Control Engineering education. It is a well-known fact that some types of control problems cannot be dealt with in just one practical session in the lab because of their huge computational load. However, the use of low-cost clusters of workstations (COWs) and message-passing software allows students to program their own control algorithms and visualize the results in real time without having to wait a long time. In this paper we analyze the control of a pH-neutralization process and the parallel performance of the algorithms proposed using an illustrative example, paying special attention to the speedup factor. Thus, this heavy-computational-load example gives a meaningful case study to demonstrate the suitability of using parallel computing techniques to include new experiments in the control lab.