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…
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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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…
PFDavg (the average Probability of Failure on Demand) is the probability that a system will fail dangerously, and not be able to perform its safety function when required. PFDavg can be determined as an average probability or maximum probability over a time period. IEC 61508 and IEC…
The B10 method uses cycle test data to predict failure rates.
A cycle test is done on a set of products (>20) until 10% of the units under test fail. The number of cycles until failure is called the B10 point.
The B10 number of cycles is converted to a…
A cycle test is done on a set of products (>20) until 10% of the units under test fail.
The number of cycles is converted to a time period by knowing the cycles per hour in any particular application.
A failure rate is calculated by dividing the 10% failure…
Failure rates are the number of failures per unit time for a piece of equipment which are usually assumed to be a constant value. They can be broken down into several categories, such as safe and dangerous, detected and undetected, and independent/normal and common cause. Failure rates are often…
Failures In Time or Failure UnIT
FIT is the number of failures per billion hours for a piece of equipment.
It is mentioned in both IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 standards as a preferred unit of measurement expressed by 109 hours.
Example: 5 FIT is expressed as 5 failures within 109 hours .
When you…
The Greek symbol lambda, λ, represents failure rates in functional safety, usually expressed in the unit of measurement of FITS.
λ can be expressed as a total failure rate for a device (λT), or it can be broken down into more specific groupings:
The Greek symbol λD represents dangerous failure rates in functional safety, usually expressed in the unit of measurement of FITs, and can be determined through FMEDAs. (FITs (λ) are failures per billion hours, expressed by 10-9 hours).
λD is the number of dangerous failures per…
The Greek symbol λDD is the detectable dangerous failure rate in functional safety expressed in the unit of measurement of FITs which can be determined through FMEDAs. (FITs (λ) are failures per billion hours, expressed by 10-9 hours).
λDD is the number of…
The Greek symbol λDU is the undetectable dangerous failure rate in functional safety expressed in the unit of measurement of FITs which can be determined through FMEDAs. (FITs (λ) are failures per billion hours, expressed by 10-9 hours).
λDU is the number of dangerous undetected failures…
The Greek symbol λS represents safe or spurious failure rates in functional safety expressed in the unit of measurement of FITs which can be determined through FMEDAs. (FITs (λ) are failures per billion hours, expressed by 10-9 hours).
λS is the number of safe…
You don’t’ really know what you know until you have to explain it (or teach it) to someone else.
When I’m asked about some of the technical aspects of functional safety, I have to stop and ask myself “What Do I Know About This?” I’m not the kind…
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…
An owner-operator engineer compared the failure rates for two similar products from an exida certificate with those from a TÜV Italia certificate. exida numbers were an order of magnitude higher. Who is right?
There are some relevant fundamental facts in the field of Reliability Engineering:
Reliability Engineering experts know there are many variables that impact operational failure rates. These variables even include how operations and maintenance are done at a specific site. Sometimes it feels like there are so many variables that no realistic failure rate can ever be predicted without a few hundred hours of…
During a recent exida webinar we received the following question:
We tend to see more failures with actuated valves, than what manufacturers published failure rates would indicate! Any reason?
There are several reasons. Some manufacturers publish data based on field return data where they classify failures caused by customers…
Who cares about field failure data? Why are we even here?
The fundamental concepts from our functional safety standards are the probabilistic performance based design. Many of you know that this was terribly controversial when this was first proposed. Even to this day, there…
Realistic component failure rate data is critical to an effective Failure Modes, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA). This failure rate data can eventually be obtained from component parts manufacturers, research and field failure data analysis. For example, exida’s Component Reliability Database (CRD) has been built from internet research, technical…