Abstract: To better overcome the operational control experimental problems of mineral grinding processes， a semi-physical simulation experiment system consisting of an operational monitoring subsystem， an operational control subsystem， a virtual sensors and actuators subsystem， and a virtual object subsystem was developed for operational control. In this system， an embedded controller based on soft PLC technology was adopted in operational monitoring subsystem for process control and optimization， and a monitoring software based on C sharp language was also programmed for process monitoring. Integrated with the virtual model of sensors and actuators， the virtual object subsystem and combined with the above subsystems， the developed system is characterized with high real-time capabilities， good portability and accord with the actual industrial processes. The experiment results show that the system can achieve satisfactory control performances for the mineral grinding process and can provide an appropriate， reliable and effective verification environment for operational control methods.

Key words: mineral grinding process(MGP), soft PLC, operational control, semi-physical simulation, experimental system