exida explains Blog

Look at the photo. What do you see? I see a ball valve with:

• a valve body
• a ball
• a stem that can turn the ball

What are the high level potential failures for a ball valve?

• Stem stuck, can no longer turn (dangerous)
…

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Look at the picture. What do you see? I see a spring return actuator with

• a diaphragm chamber
• a spring chamber
• the scotch-yoke mechanism

What are the high level potential failures for a ball valve?

• Scotch-yoke mechanism breaks, can no longer operate valve…

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Congratulations! You’ve completed the Analysis and Realization phases of the Safety Lifecycle, and are about to begin the Operation phase, but what’s next? Well obviously you need to do proof testing, but is there anything else? You may be familiar with the figure below:

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Did you see my Changing the PVST Interval. Hey, my failure rates changed! post? There is more…

In addition to impacting the way the Partial Valve Stroke Test (PVST) is addressed in the SIL verification calculation, the PVST frequency…

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I’ve been receiving several inquiries lately regarding the impact of the Partial Valve Stroke Test (PVST) interval on the failure rates of a final element. Specifically asking how does exSILentia® deal with this? exSILentia® allows users to specify if partial stroke testing is performed on their final…

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Ehh… If your safety action is stopping flow/closing a valve, how are you going to accomplish this if you consider that the remote actuated valve is not part of your SIF ?

So, what is this myth based on? The title of IEC 61508 reads “Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable…

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Today, April 15th, is tax-day in the US.  Ok, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has given us a few extra days this year (the tax filing deadline is not until April 18th).

There are a lot of similarities between how you do your taxes and how you handle…

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You will probably not hear me sing the LEGO® Movie’s “Everything is Awesome” song, I’ll keep that private (and you should be thankful to me for that). However as we just released the LOPAx™ module of the new exSILentia® v4 platform, I have come to…

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Let me start by wishing everybody a Happy Holidays and Love, Health, Peace, and Safety for 2012. My 5-year old son is very excited about all the holiday decorations. As we celebrate Christmas in my family, we emphasize the birth of baby Jesus as the reason for Christmas, but,…

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Oh Really?

It must have been the week of the Proof Test Coverage (PTC) questions. In the latest marketing wars between vendors, the Proof Test Coverage has been used as a weapon. Who would have ever thought about using Proof Test Coverage to show that product A…

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Each month at exida, we strive to spotlight one of our products that makes the job easier for today's industry professional.  In this blog, I wanted to talk about the PHAx module as part of our exSIlentia Safety Lifecycle Suite.

Process Hazards Analysis (PHA)

Process…

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Each month at exida, we strive to spotlight one of our products that makes the job easier for today's industry professional. In this blog, I wanted to talk about the exida publication  Practical SIL Target Selection - Risk Analysis per the IEC 61511 Safety Lifecycle which is based on numerous…

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Each month at exida, we strive to spotlight one of our products that makes the job easier for today's industry professional.  In this blog, I wanted to talk about our latest edtion of the SERH (Safety Equipment Realiability Handbook). 

The SERH provides a collection of failure rate data…

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I am working on a SIL verification project and just had to share some observations.

For this project, the customer decided to choose a logic solver for which no data is listed in the exida Safety Equipment Reliability Handbook (SERH). One could…

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A week ago Sunday I was traveling to Baton Rouge, LA. I was flying out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) connecting in Houston (George Bush Intercontinental Airport - IAH) with my final destination as Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR). Under normal circumstances I would probably have flown directly…

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A manufacturer whose product passes the exida IEC 61508 Assessment Scheme will receive a certificate based on IEC 61508 and perhaps other functional safety standards. There is a significant amount of information on a certificate that may not be always trivial for a novice. This document explains how one…

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What does tool integration mean? One can argue it is the ability for different tools to talk to each other and exchange data. Though this may be true from a typical software tool integration, a common definition of integrate, i.e. to bring together or incorporate (parts) into a whole…

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I had the privilege to attend the CDS-forum in Trondheim, Norway on October 15, 2019. The CDS-forum is a Norwegian Industry Forum for Cybersecurity of Industrial Automation and Control Systems. The forum is a co-operation between oil companies, engineering oil companies, consultants, vendors and researchers, with a…

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Conducting a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) can be quite laborious. In a HAZOP, you will systematically evaluate the applicable deviations for each node, within each unit, within each plant. The exSILentia® v4 PHAx™ module is setup to use…

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Many will agree that exida's Safety Equipment Reliability Handbook (SERH) and the Safety Automation Equipment List (SAEL) are very useful tools for choosing products to use in safety instrumented systems. The SAEL shows a product’s IEC 61508 and cyber security…

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