Early Validation of Control Software for Automation Plants on the Example of a Seawater Desalination Plant

In automation plants, the software that controls the behavior of a plant must adhere to strict process requirements arising from the technical processes and from the physical plant design. In current practice, the validation of the control software starts late in the engineering process – in many cases not before the plant is almost completely constructed, leading to increased efforts for correcting revealed defects. Based on an industrial example, we propose an approach that allows early validation of automation software against the plant processes and assumptions about the physical plant design through simulation.