Control Philosophies & Trends in Instrumentation

Abstract

The Introduction of processes during the last decade or so has led to evolution of control philosophies leading to new generation of process control instruments. In this article the change-over from the centralised controls to the distributed controls philosophy is discussed with its impact on the instrumentation hardware. The stringent technical requirements of process control instruments to control such process with the changes in the control philosophies has led the process control manufacturer to introduce new range of instrumentation hardware to cope up with the requirements. This is being achieved by R & D efforts in Electronic Process Control instrumentation and the developments taking place in the areas of sensors, indicators, recorders, controllers and control elements are highlighted and discussed. The introduction of new devices which is already influencing the present day instrumentation and its likely effects on future instrumentation are also discussed.

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Notes on contributors

M.K. Tewari

Tewari, MK: Born in 1933, is presently heading the R&D Division of Instrumentation Limited and holding the post of Deputy General Manager.

He post-graduated from Rajasthan University in 1957 with M.Sc. (Physics—Electronics) and subsequently passed Graduate- ship Examination of Institution Electronics and Radio Engineers London in 1958 and also passed Associate Fellowship Examination of Royal Aeronautical Society of London.

After serving in Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore for 5 years, joined Instrumentation Limited in 1963. He had undergone one year Advanced Practical Training in Design of Electronic process controls in USSR in 1964–65. He has been heading the Engineering and R&D activities in Instrumentation Limited for more than 12 years. Being in top management position, he has been closely associated in various collaborations of the Company, and visited a number of countries. He had been a Member on Working Group IV on Control and Industrial Electronics, Department of Electronics from 1974–1976.