Considerations for Nonintrinsic Math Functions

When Simulink^® PLC Coder™ encounters a math function that is not intrinsic, it generates structured text by replacing the nonintrinsic function with an equivalent IEC-61131 compatible intrinsic function. For such cases, an input value that is larger than the allowed input range causes overflow and generates a NaN value.

For example, hyperbolic tan is not an intrinsic function. Simulink PLC Coder uses exp in the generated code to represent tanh. More specifically, it uses (exp(2*x)-1)/(exp(2*x)+1). For large values of x, this function overflows. You can address this issue by adding validation code or, using blocks before calling the tanh function to check that the range of the input is within acceptable values. In MATLAB^®, tanh(x) for x>19 is 1.0000. If x>19, return a value of 1.0000.