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| Redundant tunnel monitoring with Simatic WinCC and S7-400H | | Safety for Tunnel Trio | Three newly built tunnels along the coast road between Antalya and Alanya have recently been speeding up traffic and making travel safer. Redundant control architecture with Simatic S7-400H and WinCC forms the basis for maximum operating safety and availability.
Antalya and Alanya, the two popular holiday resorts on the Turkish Riviera are connected by a four-lane coast road. In Westerly direction towards Antalya the road has three tunnels which were opened for traffic in 2006. These tunnels with a length of 300 meters, 1,540 meters and 400 meters were equipped with an efficient, highly available control system to ensure trouble-free and safe operation and to be able to respond quickly in the case of an accident or fire.
The general manager for the electromechanical equipment was the Turkish civil engineering company Yapi-Merkezi. The holding company contracted the system house for automation in Erlangen, Heitec AG, to automate the traffic control system. The Heitec engineers were responsible for the entire planning and equipment of the control technology as well as the configuration of all control switch cabinets. In addition, the Heitec AG engineers supported the tunnel construction company in the technical project management, assembly planning and interface clarification.
Priority: safe and highly available
The Turkish traffic authorities demanded the highest possible European safety standard for the tunnel trio. Therefore the tunnel control was to have an interface to the fire alarm system and to the traffic control center to ensure the fast response of all rescue services.
"For us at Heitec, a redundant control system based on Simatic controllers was the only answer for this demanding tunnel control concept in order to ensure the required operating safety and reliability," Peter Baumüller, Head of Process Automation and Visualization Systems at Heitec, explains.
Heitec developed a control architecture in which all master and slave components are redundant. A highly available Simatic S7-400H control system and two redundant WinCC stations as a SCADA system were used. The redundant design increases the safety in the tunnels in the event of a hardware failure.
In order to safely bridge the long signal distances, fiber optic cables with OLM interfaces were used for signal transmission. Every tunnel has its own switching station.
Safe in all situations
The central tunnel control room is at the center of the middle tunnel. Here all the control functions are concentrated in one control room and are conveniently operated and monitored centrally by the two WinCC stations. The tasks performed from here include, for example, the control of the signals for regulating the flow of traffic in normal operation. The speed limit or the direction of the lanes can also be determined here, depending on the traffic situation. All the relevant data in the tunnel operation, for example, traffic figures or exhaust gas pollution are acquired and passed on to a master traffic control center.
In addition, the signal equipment must respond quickly and appropriately to special operating situations such as accident or fire. Access to the tunnel must be closed immediately if a fire breaks out in the middle of the tunnel. All the vehicles still in the tunnel must then be guided out as quickly as possible.
Another function is the setting of the tunnel lighting. The lighting is regulated so as not to stain the drivers' eyes depending on the amount of daylight and the position of the vehicles in the tunnel. All the overhead signs are controlled by the central tunnel control room for safe traffic control.
New tunnel safety becomes standard
In the course of the project work, the Turkish road construction authorities declared the models developed by Heitec AG as the standard for future tunnel projects and these will be considered the minimum requirement for future tenders. Yapi-Merkezi and the Turkish road construction authorities were so convinced by the quality of the solutions from Heitec AG that further orders for the automation of buildings and new tunnels are already being negotiated.
Ideas 3 / 2007 | |
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