Norman L Swanson

US Patent:

20200310920, Oct 1, 2020

Filed:

Jul 3, 2019

Appl. No.:

16/502692

Inventors:

- Morris Plains NJ, US
Jason Thomas Urso - Houston TX, US
James Michael Schreder - Perkasie PA, US
John Rosa-Bian - Ambler PA, US
Norman Swanson - Douglassville PA, US
Jethro F. Steinman - Haverford PA, US

Assignee:

Honeywell International Inc. - Morris Plains NJ

International Classification:

G06F 11/14
G06F 13/42
G06F 9/50
G05B 19/418

Abstract:

A method of fault-tolerant process control includes providing a network process control system in an industrial processing facility (IPF) including a plant-wide network coupling a server to computing platforms each including computing hardware and memory hosting a software application for simultaneously supporting a process controller and another process controller or an I/O gateway. The computing platforms are coupled together by a private path redundancy network for providing a hardware resource pool. At least some of the computing platforms are directly coupled by an I/O mesh network to a plurality of I/O devices to field devices that are coupled to processing equipment. Upon detecting at least one failing device in the hardware resource pool, over the private path redundancy network a backup is placed into service for the failing device from the another process controller or I/O gateway that is at another of the computing platforms in the hardware resource pool.