You are welcome to join the Department of Chemical Engineering on Friday, March 1, 2019, for a lecture by Dr. Ahmad W. Al-Dabbagh, NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, speaking on Control, Monitoring and Automation Methods for Process Facilities.
Abstract
In this seminar, Dr. Al-Dabbagh will discuss control, monitoring and automation methods for process facilities, based on control-theoretic and data-analytic design approaches.
First, a control-theoretic topology will be proposed as an alternative setup for regulating processes. The topology provides several advantages, such as allowing for a hybrid centralized and decentralized control paradigm, direct and indirect process data transfer between the sensing and actuation and the controller devices, redundant communication and control capabilities, and connectivity between distributed and distant devices. The design of the topology will be discussed under different considerations, namely, perfect operating conditions, faults in devices, failure in communication, and cyberattacks, as well as model reduction and topological formation.
Then, Dr. Al-Dabbagh will discuss data-analytic approaches proposed for better understanding and operation of process facilities. These approaches are based on collected and historized process data and can provide decision support tools for process operators. The approaches will be discussed with respect to the definition of performance metrics to characterize process behaviour, design of visualization plots for more effective display of information, prediction of the behaviour of process variables, development of ranking and re-ordering procedures for displayed alarm messages related to process abnormalities and identification of relations between operator actions and alarm messages.
Biographical Sketch
Ahmad W. Al-Dabbagh holds an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for Aerospace Studies at the University of Toronto. His research interests include networked control systems, alarm systems, and process operation and automation.
Dr. Al-Dabbagh received his Ph.D. degree in control systems from the University of Alberta in 2018, M.A.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in 2010, and B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Ryerson University in 2007. He has received several awards and scholarships, including an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS D3), a Governor General's Academic Medal (Gold), and a Graduate Student Teaching Award. Dr. Al-Dabbagh has more than three years of industrial experience in development and commissioning of control, monitoring, and automation solutions for process applications. He is a licensed Professional Engineer with Professional Engineers Ontario.