Tunnel central control system enhanced with modern control approaches

The tunnel central control system is designed for maintaining the necessary safety and resistance against failures as a system fully redundant at all levels. All hardware components of the control system and their connections are doubled. Control system is based on the programmable logic controllers (PLC’s) and used the industrial buses on an optical and metallic physical layer. This system controls the traffic and all tunnel equipment systems (variable traffic signs, various lighting elements, ventilation system, etc.). Nowadays the control strategy is based on measured data inside the tunnel, metrological information and operator’s commands. The control strategy or algorithm must be enhanced to obtain better or optimal results. Using of model predictive control (MPC) may lead to optimize the control way for chosen criteria. MPC can be implemented to PLC by several methods.