2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

For the past several decades, the programmable logic controller has been one of the major driving forces in industrial automation. Affected by COVID19 since spring 2020, teaching a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) course has become a difficult task for both faculty and students since it involves many labs. Access to labs has been limited by campus closures and capacity limits to maintain social distancing. To overcome this problem, we developed a Virtual PLC Lab simulation software, which consists of four major components – a Soft PLC – the Runtime Engine, a Ladder Diagram Program Editor and Monitor, a Data/Tag Editor and Monitor, and an I/O Device Simulator, aimed at getting a working prototype together in the shortest period of time possible to allow us to continue to offer this course in the coming semesters. The software was designed to have a graphic user interface (GUI) similar in look and feel to those of the Allen Bradley ControlLogix PLC software RSLogix 5000 that were installed in our lab and the Lab Console (I/O Devices) Simulator was designed to mimic our lab I/O device console. Object Oriented Programming and formal model-based design methods were adopted to keep the maximum possible level of data abstraction. This software was experimentally used in our 2020 and 2021 online PLC classes and student performance and brief statistics were satisfactory and presented herein.