Safety Rules and Procedure for Disaster Prevention of a Sustainable Control System Design

Abstract

A causal engineering system [i.e. a system in which before an excitation is applied at t = T, the response is zero for ∞ < t < T where T is the period (Kuo, 2005)] such as a control system may suddenly become hazardous, disastrous and destructive on a scale unimaginable and colossal, due to cause and effect (causality, as defined above). Such disaster can occur if in the control system (robust, adaptive or optimal), the plant and/or controller (which both form the process) in question or the feedback element (sensor) or the filter is/are left to operate outside the region and boundary of safe operation of its design. The magnitude of such a disaster may reach an alarming and catastrophic level leading to, for example, destruction (complete failure) of the control system, factory or manufacturing unit, destroying not only human lives and other life forms sometimes, but also rendering the environment or locality where the factory or industry is situated inhabitable and unsafe for any form of life to exist there as a consequence. Example is the tragic Chernobyl nuclear energy disaster in Eastern Ukraine in 1986 or the more recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan in 2011, to mention a few. They were unfortunate engineering situations and nuclear energy/power disasters of huge magnitude due to radiation and radioactivity that could have been avoided and prevented if the human operator error was avoided and eliminated by strict adherence to the safety procedures for their operation and if proper fault-tolerant equipment/elements were used to implement a robust, adaptive or optimal control. This paper therefore, shades light on control systems and also presents some safety rules that can be used to operate control systems as a proactive disaster prevention measure, in order to achieve and maintain safety and sustainability.