Designing the control of an electrical drive using Petri Nets

In this paper it is presented the possibility of how can be applied and with which advantages the method of Petri Nets in designing of a control unit for electrical drives. With the help of Petri Nets, it is more simple and adequate to have a complete description of an industrial process and to analyze how an electric drive system behaves for different applied conditions or with different functioning conditions. Starting with a description of this method, then we present a practical solution for designing the starting process of a d.c. machine. Using the Petri Nets Method, we can get for the described example four different solutions in comparison with the standard one, well known for this kind of application. Further, those methods are simulated with a program specialized in Petri Nets simulations, results are implemented with programming logic controllers by using ladder diagram programming language. The simulation programs are presented and the platform on which the method were applied. In addition, we present a comparison between solutions obtained considering the resources involved.