Process plants that produce chemical products through pre-designed processes are fundamental in the Chemical Engineering industry. The safety of hazardous processing plants is of paramount importance as an accident could cause major damage to property and/or injury to people. HAZID is a computer system that helps designers and operators of process plants to identify potential design and operation problems given a process plant design. However, there are issues that need to be addressed before such a system will be accepted for common use. This research project considers how to improve the usability and acceptability of such a system by developing tools to test the developed models in order for the users to gain confidence in HAZID s output as HAZID is a model based system with a library of equipment models. The research also investigates the development of computer-aided safety applications and how they can be integrated together to extend HAZID to support different kinds of safety-related reasoning tasks. Three computer-aided tools and one reasoning system have been developed from this project. The first is called Model Test Bed, which is to test the correctness of models that have been built. The second is called Safe Isolation Tool, which is to define isolation boundary and identify potential hazards for isolation work. The third is an Instrument Checker, which lists all the instruments and their connections with process items in a process plant for the engineers to consider whether the instrument and its loop provide safeguards to the equipment during the hazard identification procedure. The fourth is a cause-effect analysis system that can automatically generate cause-effect tables for the control engineers to consider the safety design of the control of a plant as the table shows process events and corresponding process responses designed by the control engineer. The thesis provides a full description of the above four tools and how they are integrated into the HAZID system to perform control safety analysis and hazard identification in process plants.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:17:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel Ribeiro Cardoso.pdf: 11034981 bytes, checksum: da947a544847750d1d681a80845198fc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-05-14 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Drawing of the poiesis: communication of a collective process of creation in architecture is assigned as a domain of the visuality research. As a work related to scientific visualization, it can be compared to the investigations on representation and communication through visual graphic images. The purpose of this thesis is to reflect on issues concerning the processes of generation and the adequate way to represent them. The process of the form development tipology in architecture is adopted as the object of the research. As a proper object of a culture, the type is perceived as an element that serves as a general principle of creation, a supraindividual mechanism needed for the construction of meaning and identity of a society. In that sense, the houses, instantiation of the same logic of creation, are ways that express a collective intelligence. Given the necessary scale for the perception of its evolution, the object was found in the architecture formed between 1890 and 1980, in the region of Cajuais and Mutamba, southern coast of Ceará. In that context, there are some issues concerning the problematic of the thesis to be considered: How to preserve the processes of generation of cultural object? How to apprehend something that is by its nature operative and informative? Moreover, how to represent adequately a poiesis? The answers to these questions are the hypothesis crux of the thesis that considers the grammar of the form development most appropriate sign to represent for the representation of a poiesis. The articulated theories to support the development of the research are distinct. However, the composed network is in a common area in a environment where theoreticians settle the issues of sign and meaning according to the thinking of Charles S Peirce. The theoretical foundation is based on three views: the new General Theory of Systems as defined by Bunge and Vieira, in which it seeks concepts and methodologies adjusting them to the second view; the Genetic Criticism as proposed by Salles that searches general principles of the creation processes; and Semiotic as a basis for the issues of representation and communication processes. Furthermore, it will be considered authors like Chomsky, Prusinkiewics, Stiny, Duarte, among others that point out the grammar as a representation of process in semiotics systems. Finally, it is proposed a sign poiesis appropriate to a system generator of forms that operates with the evolutionary logic found in the object. Therefore, the result of the research is not only a tool that speculates the generation and the visualization of future forms, but it is also a path for the development of Genetic Criticism / Desenho de uma poiesis: comunicação de um processo coletivo de criação na arquitetura insere-se no domínio das pesquisas da visualidade. Como um trabalho ligado à visualização científica, equipara-se às investigações sobre representação e comunicação por meio de imagens gráfico-visuais. O propósito da tese é refletir sobre questões relativas aos processos de geração e à forma adequada de representá-los. Adota-se como objeto da pesquisa o processo de formação de uma tipologia na arquitetura. Objeto próprio de uma cultura, o tipo é entendido como um elemento que serve como princípio geral de formação, um mecanismo supra-individual necessário à construção de sentido e identidade de uma sociedade. Nessa acepção, as casas, instanciações de uma mesma lógica de formação, são meios que expressam uma inteligência coletiva. Dada a escala necessária à percepção de sua evolução, o objeto foi considerado na arquitetura formada entre 1890 e 1980, na região de Cajuais e Mutamba, litoral sul do Ceará. Nesse contexto, apresentam-se algumas das questões constituintes da problemática da tese: Como preservar processos de geração de um objeto cultural? Como guardar alguma coisa que é por natureza operativa e informacional? Ou, ainda, como representar adequadamente uma poiesis? Nas possíveis repostas a esses questionamentos está o cerne da hipótese da tese que considera a gramática de geração da forma o signo mais adequado à representação de uma poiesis. São linhas distintas as teorias articuladas para apoiar o desenvolvimento da pesquisa. Contudo, a rede tecida encontra-se num espaço comum, num ambiente onde teóricos concertam questões do signo e da significação em coerência com pensamento de Charles S. Peirce. A fundamentação teórica se constitui a partir de três linhas: a Teoria Geral dos Sistemas, na acepção de Bunge e Vieira, nos quais se buscam conceitos e metodologias ajustando-as à segunda linha; a Crítica Genética, precisamente na forma proposta por Salles, que busca por princípios gerais dos processos de formação; e a Semiótica, como fundamento para as questões da representação e comunicação de processos. Aqui, especificamente, são considerados autores como Chomsky, Prusinkiewicz, Stiny, Duarte, entre outros que também apontam para a gramática como representação de processo em sistemas semióticos. Ao fim, propõe-se como um signo adequado à poiesis um sistema gerador de formas que opera com a lógica evolutiva encontrada no objeto. Deste modo, tem-se como resultado da pesquisa não só uma ferramenta que especula sobre geração e visualização de formas futuras, como também um caminho para o desenvolvimento da Crítica Genética