Champions of safety,
Champions of safety, hidden in the swiss alps Today, people expect more and more thrill from a roller coaster ride. To do so, the amusement parks are coming up with roller coaster rides with further higher levels of complexities. Swiss based company Inautec, located in the small town of Wollerau on the upperside of lake Zurichsee, is in the business of developing and building controls for passenger transportation systems such as roller coasters and monorails. Safety first, thrill later With increasing levels of complexity in the roller coasters, the thrill quotient increases, but it is obvious that the safety is of the paramount importance over here. To provide these levels of safety, high quality softwares are gaining importance. Apart from softwares also important is low, extremely low hardware failure rate. To achieve this minimal failure rate of hardwares, failsafe controllers and meticulously tested software are used. Inautec relies on Siemens To provide safety to its passengers as well as passenger vehicles, Inautec relies on failsafe controllers from Siemens. The Swiss based manufacturer, uses standard components from Siemens, to ensure economical working and to accelerate the development time. The Simatic WinAC RTX F is a failsafe software controller for PC based automation. In addition to standard and failsafe control functions, this controller is suitable for various automation tasks. Parallel data processing, and integration of user’s own technological functions which are implemented on one single platform and in which the openness of Windows is to be exploited, are in particular, the key tasks for which the Simatic WinAC RTX F controller is well suited. The control centre communicates with its vehicles over the WLAN. The signals are reliably transmitted using radiating cables and/or antennae. The failsafe protocol guarantees transmission without any failure. The PC-based WinAC RTX F controller is used predominantly for complex roller coasters. The motors are driven by modular Sinamics S120 converters. As the vehicles are in motion, the safety relevant input-output nodes are integrated using the failsafe protocols over the WLAN. The failsafe operation of the control encompasses self monitoring and change over to different modes in an event of error. Both the failsafe part of the system and the normal functions are programmed in the TIA (Totally integrated automation) portal. “This control system satisfies the maximum safety requirements and complies with the relevant safety standards, in case of roller coasters upto SIL3” says Üli Mörgeli, Safety assessor at Inautec. The majority of the code is still written in regular software, only the safety relevant functions are programmed in the failsafe code. Mörgeli further explains “To facilitate cohesive testing, the amount of failsafe code is restricted. Therefore on site, we only have to adjust the parameters of the regular software which don’t impact the safety related functions. If any adjustments do have to be carried out, this is done using a defined process which again involves a series of review stages”. Photographs: Intamin Amusement Rides www.siemens.com CONTROL AND DRIVE TECHNOLOGY
i About Siemens Siemens is a German multinational conglomerate and the largest engineering company in Europe. With operations in 200 countries and employing 348,000 people, in the 2015 fiscal, Siemens generated revenues of € 75 billion. A cabinet comprising of Simatic WinAC RTX F failsafe controller AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGIES 2/2016
