A Training Simulator for Crushing Plant Operators
Paper in proceeding, 2012

Crushing plants are widely used around the world as a pre-processing step in the mineral and mining industries and as standalone processing plants in the aggregates industry. Despite automation and different advanced model predictive control a lot of the process is still managed by operators. The operators affect a lot of the performance. The numbers of the improvement they can achieve are at least as big as the advanced control algorithms’, today. Therefore it is also important to train the operators so they know how to behave in different situations. Models for crushers and other production units have been developed during the years and the latest add is the different units’ dynamic behavior being brought in, which gives the crushing plants dynamic time dependant performance. This can be used as a simulator for operators training. By connecting a Human Machine Interface (HMI) to a dynamic simulator with the models incorporated, a training environment for operators can be achieved. In this paper a dynamic crushing plant simulator implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK has been connected to an HMI via a PLC. The HMI is placed in a control room at the university and complemented with monitors showing sequences from the process connected to the simulations, thus creating a realistic control room for training. In the created training environment the operators can be trained under realistic conditions. Simple training scenarios and how they could be simulated are discussed. Apart from the increased level of knowledge and experience among the operators, the time is an important factor. While a real crushing plant is still being built, the operators to be can already be trained, saving a lot of the commissioning time.

Crushing

Training

Operator

Cone Crusher

Simulator

Control Room

Author

Gauti Asbjörnsson

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Product Development

Erik Hulthén

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Product Development

Magnus Evertsson

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Product Development

XXVI International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC 2012: Innovative Processing for Sustainable Growth; New Delhi; India; 24 September 2012 through 28 September 2012)

2164-2171
978-819017143-4 (ISBN)

Subject Categories

Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Areas of Advance

Production

ISBN

978-819017143-4

More information

Created

10/7/2017