| Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) is widely used nowadays. It is a core course to mechanical and electrical engineering majors in the Secondary Vocational Schools. There are many factors needed to master PLC programming, such as more practice, a good training platform and more training projects that closely connected with the industrial applications. Lack of funds, space, equipments and many other objective conditions, it is a big difficulty for the Secondary Vocational Schools to be equipped with lots of practical industry control equipments in their training labs. So, the existing PLC training equipments often can not meet the teaching requirements, whether in types or in quantities. This situation influences the teaching effect of PLC course.In the thesis, a set of PLC simulation teaching system is designed and developed, which is very suitable for the students in the Secondary Vocational Schools. The industrial control configuration software is used to develop the simulation teaching system. The training programs are designed, according to the necessary abilites and cognitive characteristics of the students. The training projects of many difficulty levels are developed. All the training projects are integrated to a single configuration programming system. This kind of design makes the system simply and conveniently operated. Each training project has a demonstrational function for control operations and the demonstrational function was implemented and programmed by the command programming language of the configuration software. This increases the experiences of the students to control operation programming. The characteristics of simple system design and its operation are very suitable for the PLC course teaching in the Secondary Vocational Schools. Based on the successful system development, the application of the domestic PLC boards and the virtual simulation teaching mode were tried. The hardware costs of simulation teaching system are greatly reduced by using domestic PLC boards. A nearly nought hardware cost could be achieved by using the virtual PLC and the virtual controlled objects in the whole virtual teaching system. The time and space of teaching become unlimited. Thus students’learning time and place are expanded and the teaching efficiency gets improved.The main developing work of the system is realizing the system framework design and demonstration functions. The control of the menu bar and the problem of the variables integration for multiple training project integration were solved. The demonstration functions were realized and the communication problems were also handled.Finally, the applying results of the simulation teaching system are analyzed. The strong points and shortcomings of both the system and the virtual mode are summarized. The construction conception to PLC training room which combines the simulation system with the physical devices is proposed. |
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