IEC 61508 functional safety standard indicates Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) needs to be evaluated by three design barriers:
Systematic Capability is achieved when the equipment…
The IEC 61511 standard recommends the use of a functional safety lifecycle. Any safety lifecycle can be used, but the standard lays out a process which can be divided into three main classifications as an example.
The lifecycle is set up like this:
I have received several calls lately to our Australia / New Zealand office about whether it is acceptable to use published failure rates that seem too good to be true.
The person calling is usually doing a SIL verification calculation for an operating plant or for an…
IEC 61511: 2016 Process Industry Sector
IEC 61511 is a technical standard that sets out practices in the engineering of systems that ensure the safety of an industrial process through the use of instrumentation. It entails requirements for users of process control and instrumentation for component / element or sub-system safety.…
The IEC 61508 standard recommends the use of a functional safety lifecycle. Any safety lifecycle can be used, but the standard does lay out a nominal 16-step process which can be divided into three main classifications as an example.
The Analysis phase of the lifecycle deals with gathering background…
In the following series of blogs, we'll go back to basics and run down everything you need to know to get started in functional safety. We'll start with some more general terms and descriptions and make our way to more advanced material.
IEC 61508: 2010 International Performance-Based Standard
The
A Safety Function is the action of a collection of equipment to implement automatic mitigation of a particular hazard. It is the job of the Safety Instrumented Function (SIF).
Some examples of common Safety Functions:
In the following series of blogs, we'll go back to basics and run down everything you need to know to get started in functional safety. We'll start with some more general terms and descriptions and make our way to more advanced material.
A SIS – Safety Instrumented…
In the following series of blogs, we'll go back to basics and run down everything you need to know to get started in functional safety. We'll start with some more general terms and descriptions and make our way to more advanced material.
SIF – Safety Instrumented Function…
In the following series of blogs, we'll go back to basics and run down everything you need to know to get started in functional safety. We'll start with some more general terms and descriptions and make our way to more advanced material.
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Walking into work last week and seeing this article reassured me why I work at exida. Incidents, like this recent one at a pesticide plant in eastern China, are why we push every day to help educate people about the importance of functional safety.
In the following series of blogs, we'll go back to basics and run down everything you need to know to get started in functional safety. We'll start with some more general terms and descriptions and make our way to more advanced material.
Functional safety means the…
When I went to set my goals for 2019, I set both personal and professional goals. One of my professional goals is to clean off my desk, but another is to get more people to think about functional safety before an accident occurs, instead of when they are normally…
One of the changes that was made in 2016 to the IEC 61511 standard was the inclusion of periodic personnel assessments (clause 5.2.2.3), whereby a procedure is required to manage the competence of all those involved in the SIS lifecycle; “periodic” assessments are to be carried out to document…
My previous blog mentioned the fact that a Burner Management System (BMS) is unique, in that this instrumented layer is the last line of defense and may be the only protection layer in the case of a BPCS failure.
Have you ever performed an analysis to determine…