Alarm management system

• US 4,816,208 A
• Filed: 02/14/1986
• Issued: 03/28/1989
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/1986
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Westinghouse Electric Company LLC (Brookfield Asset Management Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Westinghouse Electric Corporation (Paramount Global (f/k/a ViacomCBS Inc.))
• Inventors: Butterworth, George E. III, Easter, James R., Lipner, Melvin H., Woods, David D., Elm, William C.
• Primary Examiner(s): CANGIALOSI, SALVATORE A
• Application Number:
  US06/829,741
• Time in Patent Office: 1,138 Days
• Field of Search: 364/200, 364/518, 364/521, 364/188, 364/431.01, 376/248, 376/259, 376/216, 376/217, 340/506, 340/517, 340/519, 340/525
• US Class Current: 376/259
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0272 Presentation of monitored results, e.g. selection of status reports to be displayed; Filtering information to the user
• CPC Class Codes: G21C 17/00 Monitoring; Testing measuring in general G01; Maintaining
• CPC Class Codes: Y02E 30/30 Nuclear fission reactors

Abstract

A hybrid parallel/serial alarm management system in which sensor signals are intelligently processed to produce abnormality indication signals. The abnormality indication signals are divided into groups defined by functions of the system being monitored and are used to generate abnormality messages according to goal violation, process disturbance and process unavailability requirements for each function. Within each goal, process and support category the messages are ranked according to a predetermined local priority and chronologically within the same priority. Each function includes a spatially dedicated parallel display location which displays the highest priority portion of each category of messages associated with each function. The messages not displayed on the parallel display are displayed on a serial display unit in ranked order by category within function. Each time message space becomes available on the parallel display unit within a category, the next message with the highest priority within that category moves onto the parallel display.

Claims

1. An alarm management system for a controlled process, comprising:

abnormality indication production means for sampling sensors and producing abnormality indication signals;

dynamic alarm handling means for producing, for a plurality of functions, written abnormality messages corresponding to the abnormality indication signals, the messages corresponding to the functions of the process, each function being subdivided into a plurality of catagories and each category having a plruality of messages, and for sorting the messages by function and by category within each function and ranking the messages by severity within each category; and

spatially dedicated parallel display means having a spatially dedicated function display corresponding to each function and category within each function, for displaying a portion of the messages and having a limited amount of parallel display space corresponding to each category for which the messages compete.

2. A system as recited in claim 1, wherein all of the messages are held in category queues and said system further comprises serial display means for display, by category and in rank order within each category, the queues of messages.

3. A system as recited in claim 2, wherein messages move from the category queues to said parallel display means when space becomes available in the respective categories on said parallel display means due to an abnormality being resolved.

4. A system as recited in claim 3, wherein said parallel display means includes an overflow indicator for each category and said dynamic alarm handling means further includes overflow indication means for providing an overflow indication to said overflow indicator whenever messages are added to the queue and not displayed on said parallel display means.

5. A system as recited in claim 4, wherein each spatially dedicated function display includes a fixed number of goal violation message slots, a fixed number of process disturbance message slots and a fixed number of process unavailability message slots and the highest priority message appears in the highest priority slot, respectively.

6. A method of alarm management for process signals produced by process control sensors, said method comprising the steps of:

(a) producing abnormality indication signals, from the process signals, indicative of the state of the controlled process;

(b) producing written abnormality messages, for a plurality of functions, from the abnormality indication signals in accordance with functions of the controlled process, the messages corresponding to the functions, each function being subdivided into a plurality of categories and each category having a plurality of messages, the messages including goal violation category messages indicating whether a goal of the function is being satisfied, process disturbance category messages indicating whether the processes necessary to perform the function are operating properly and process unavailability category messsages indicaitng whether processes not currently active could work if needed;

(c) sorting the respective category messages in accordance with a local priority and storing the messages in category queues;

(d) displaying in spatially dedicated function locations a portion of the goal violation category messages, process disturbance category messages and process unavailability category messages having the highest priority; and

(e) displaying the messages in the queue on a serial display by priority within category when requested.

7. A method as recited in claim 6, further comprising the step of:

(f) moving the messages from the category queues into the spatially dedicated function locations as display space becomes available at the respective spatially dedicated function locations due to resolution of an abnormality.

8. A method as recited in claim 6, further comprising the step of:

(f) moving the messages from the respective spatially dedicated function locations as new messages with a higher priority enter the category queues.

9. A method as recited in claim 7, wherein each spatially dedicated function location includes a limited number of display slots and said method further comprises the step of:

(g) displaying an overflow indicator at the spatially dedicated category location whenever queue length exceeds the number of display slots for the category.

10. A method as recited in claim 9, wherein step (d) comprises the step of (di) sorting messages in the same serverity category with the same priority chronologically.

11. An alarm management system, comprising:

a light water pressurized nuclear power plant;

sensors coupled to said light water pressurized nuclear power plant and producing sensor signals indicating the state of said light water pressurized nuclear power plant;

a sensor signal processor, operatively connected to said sensors, for producing state signals indicating the state of the sensors monitoring the power plant from the sensor signals and for combining the state signals using rule based algorithms to produce abnormality indication signals;

a message processor, operatively connected to said sensor signal processor, for receiving the abnormality indication signals, generating, for a plurality of functions, written function-category messages describing the abnormal condition associated with the respective abnormality indicating signal, the messages corresponding to the functions, each function being subdivided into a plurality of categories and each category having a plurality of messages, the messages being associated with the goals of the function, processes necessary for the function and support necessary for the function, sorting the messages into goal violation, process disturbance and process unavailability category messages within each function, and ranking the messages in each category in dependence upon a predetermined local priority, outputting a portion of the messages with the highest priority and retaining the messages in priority order within category within function in category queues;

a spatially dedicated parallel display for each function, operatively connected to said message processor, for displaying the portion of the messages simultaneously; and

a serial display, operatively connected to said message processor, for displaying the message in the queues in priority order within category within function upon request, said message processor outputting messages from the queue to said parallel display as display space becomes available on said parallel display due to an abnormality being resolved.

12. A method of alarm management, said method comprising the steps of:

(a) sampling sensors in a pressurized light water nuclear power plant to produce signals;

(b) producing abnormality indication signals, from the process signals, indicative of the state of the power plant;

(c) producing, for a plurality of functions, written abnormality messages from the abnormality indication signals in accordance with functions of the power plant, the messages corresponding to the functions, each function being subdivided into a plurality of categories and each category having a plurality of messages, the abnormality messages being produced by category within the function and including goal violation category messages idnicating whether a goal of the function is being obtained, process disturbance category messages indicating whether processes necessary to the function are operating properly and process unavailability category messages indicating whether a process not currently active could work if needed;

(d) sorting the respective messages in accordance with a local severity priority within category within function and storing the messages in category queues;

(e) displaying in spatially dedicated function locations a portion of the goal violation messages, process disturbance messages and process unavailability messages having the highest priority, where messages of equal rank within each category within each function are displayed chronologically ;

(f) displaying the category queues serially in priority order by category within function upon request; and

(g) moving messages from the category queues into the respective spatially dedicated function locations display space becomes available at the respective spatially dedicated function location due to an abnormality being resolved.