Development of a Product Solution for Pressure and Volume Flow Control for Air Handling Units

Cleanroom model with prototypically developed BACnet/IP sensors and actuators for testing cleanroom control systems
Source: Wismar University of Applied Sciences

The aim of the project is to develop a control design concept for ventilation and air-conditioning systems in order to achieve clean room classes safely and to maintain them even in the event of malfunctions.

The project has three main development goals:

(i) the development and implementation of a control concept for clean room air pressure ratios with the required volume flow to safely achieve and maintain clean room classes.

(ii) the development of a gateway to make volume flow controllers network-compatible and to integrate them into BACnet/IP networks

(iii) the development of a bus simulator for load and error rate estimation in the project planning phase.

The development of the BACnet gateway has been fully implemented. With the BACnet gateway, volume flow controllers can now be optimally used in clean room control. Volume flow controllers are established and widely used devices for controlling air movements in rooms and buildings. They often use proprietary buses or analog signals to connect the integrated sensors and actuators. The addition of a BACnet/IP interface enables much more precise control of these devices and thus significantly better integration into clean room control systems via a standardized communication platform.

Based on these optimized air terminal units, control algorithms were redesigned and existing ones were improved. The project partner, Dr. Diestel GmbH, is involved in numerous other construction projects.

The third project goal, bus utilization and error rate estimation, resulted from the problem of being able to use more precise information about the future utilization of bus systems already in the planning phase for optimal project planning. As a result, a software environment is now available that generates a Simulink/SimEvent model from CAD project planning documents, with which the bus utilization and error rate of the planned system structure can be estimated.


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