Testing and validation of safety logic in the virtual environment

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for testing safety PLC logic in a virtual environment, using the IOCO testing relation as validation criteria. Manufacturing companies more and more rely on virtual commissioning to reduce the physical commissioning time by testing and debugging the PLC logic of the nominal behavior prior to physical commissioning. However, safety PLC logic testing is still carried out on real systems manually. This manual practice of safety logic validation hinders industry to exploit the full potential of virtual commissioning to reduce the physical commissioning time. The proposed approach assists manufacturing companies in the validation of safety PLC logic using a simulation model before the factory acceptance testing phase. Using the proposed approach, a simulation model can be used to test the safety PLC logic and prepare better for the factory acceptance testing phase, hence, further reduction in physical commissioning time can be achieved.