Category: Control Functions

This cat­egory dis­cusses vari­ous aspects of con­trol func­tions.

ISO 13849 – 1 Analysis — Part 8: Fault Exclusion

This entry is part of 9 in the series How to do a 13849 – 1 ana­lys­is

Fault Consideration & Fault Exclusion

ISO 13849 – 1, Chapter 7 [1, 7] dis­cusses the need for fault con­sid­er­a­tion and fault exclu­sion. Fault con­sid­er­a­tion is the pro­cess of examin­ing the com­pon­ents and sub-​systems used in the safety-​related part of the con­trol sys­tem (SRP/​CS) and mak­ing a list of all the faults that could occur in each one. This a def­in­itely non-​trivial exer­cise!

Thinking back to some of the earli­er art­icles in this series where I men­tioned the dif­fer­ent types of faults, you may recall that there are detect­able and undetect­able faults, and there are safe and dan­ger­ous faults, lead­ing us to four kinds of fault:

  • Safe undetect­able faults
  • Dangerous undetect­able faults
  • Safe detect­able faults
  • Dangerous undetect­able faults

For sys­tems where no dia­gnostics are used, Category B and 1, faults need to be elim­in­ated using inher­ently safe design tech­niques. Care needs to be taken when clas­si­fy­ing com­pon­ents as “well-​tried” versus using a fault exclu­sion, as com­pon­ents that might nor­mally be con­sidered “well-​tried” might not meet those require­ments in every applic­a­tion.

For sys­tems where dia­gnostics are part of the design, i.e., Category 2, 3, and 4, the fault lists are used to eval­u­ate the dia­gnost­ic cov­er­age (DC) of the test sys­tems. Depending on the archi­tec­ture, cer­tain levels of DC are required to meet the rel­ev­ant PL, see [1, Fig. 5]. The fault lists are start­ing point for the determ­in­a­tion of DC, and are an input into the hard­ware and soft­ware designs. All of the dan­ger­ous detect­able faults must be covered by the dia­gnostics, and the DC must be high enough to meet the PLr. for the safety func­tion.

The fault lists and fault exclu­sions are used in the Validation por­tion of this pro­cess as well. At the start of the Validation pro­cess flow chart [2, Fig. 1], you can see how the fault lists and the cri­ter­ia used for fault exclu­sion are used as inputs to the val­id­a­tion plan.

The diagram shows the first few stages in the ISO 13849-2 Validation process. See ISO 13849-2, Figure 1.
Start of ISO 13849 – 2 Fig. 1

Faults that can be excluded do not need to val­id­ated, sav­ing time and effort dur­ing the sys­tem veri­fic­a­tion and val­id­a­tion (V & V). How is this done?

Fault Consideration

The first step is to devel­op a list of poten­tial faults that could occur, based on the com­pon­ents and sub­sys­tems included in SRP/​CS. ISO 13849 – 2 [2] includes lists of typ­ic­al faults for vari­ous tech­no­lo­gies. For example, [2, Table A.4] is the fault list for mech­an­ic­al com­pon­ents.

Mechanical fault list from ISO 13849-2
Table A.4 — Faults and fault exclu­sions — Mechanical devices, com­pon­ents and ele­ments
(e.g. cam, fol­low­er, chain, clutch, brake, shaft, screw, pin, guide, bear­ing)

[2] con­tains tables sim­il­ar to Table A.4 for:

  • Pressure-​coil springs
  • Directional con­trol valves
  • Stop (shut-​off) valves/​non-​return (check) valves/​quick-​action vent­ing valves/​shuttle valves, etc.
  • Flow valves
  • Pressure valves
  • Pipework
  • Hose assem­blies
  • Connectors
  • Pressure trans­mit­ters and pres­sure medi­um trans­ducers
  • Compressed air treat­ment — Filters
  • Compressed-​air treat­ment — Oilers
  • Compressed air treat­ment — Silencers
  • Accumulators and pres­sure ves­sels
  • Sensors
  • Fluidic Information pro­cessing — Logical ele­ments
  • etc.

As you can see, there are many dif­fer­ent types of faults that need to be con­sidered. Keep in mind that I did not give you all of the dif­fer­ent fault lists – this post would be a mile long if I did that! The point is that you need to devel­op a fault list for your sys­tem, and then con­sider the impact of each fault on the oper­a­tion of the sys­tem. If you have com­pon­ents or sub­sys­tems that are not lis­ted in the tables, then you need to devel­op your own fault lists for those items. Using Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) tech­niques are usu­ally the best approach for these com­pon­ents [23], [24].

When con­sid­er­ing the faults to be included in the list there are a few things that should be con­sidered [1, 7.2]:

  • if after the first fault occurs oth­er faults devel­op due to the first fault, then you can group those faults togeth­er as a single fault
  • two or more single faults with a com­mon cause can be con­sidered as a single fault
  • mul­tiple faults with dif­fer­ent causes but occur­ring sim­ul­tan­eously is con­sidered improb­able and does not need to be con­sidered

Examples

A voltage reg­u­lat­or fails in a sys­tem power sup­ply so that the 24 Vdc out­put rises to an unreg­u­lated 36 Vdc (the intern­al power sup­ply bus voltage), and after some time has passed, two sensors fail, then all three fail­ures can be grouped and con­sidered as a single fault.

If a light­ning strike occurs on the power line and the res­ult­ing surge voltage on the 400 V mains causes an inter­pos­ing con­tact­or and the motor drive it con­trols to fail to danger, then these fail­ures may be grouped and con­sidered as one.

A pneu­mat­ic lub­ric­at­or runs out of lub­ric­ant and is not refilled, depriving down­stream pneu­mat­ic com­pon­ents of lub­ric­a­tion. The spool on the sys­tem dump valve sticks open because it is not cycled often enough. Neither of these fail­ures has the same cause, so there is no need to con­sider them as occur­ring sim­ul­tan­eously because the prob­ab­il­ity of both hap­pen­ing con­cur­rently is extremely small. One cau­tion: These two faults MAY have a com­mon cause – poor main­ten­ance. Even if this is true and you decide to con­sider them to be two faults with a com­mon cause, they could then be grouped as a single fault.

Fault Exclusion

Once you have your well-​considered fault lists togeth­er, the next ques­tion is “Can any of the lis­ted faults be excluded?” This is a tricky ques­tion! There are a few points to con­sider:

  • Does the sys­tem archi­tec­ture allow for fault exclu­sion?
  • Is the fault tech­nic­ally improb­able, even if it is pos­sible?
  • Does exper­i­ence show that the fault is unlikely to occur?*
  • Are there tech­nic­al require­ments related to the applic­a­tion and the haz­ard that might sup­port fault exclu­sion?

* BE CAREFUL with this one!

Whenever faults are excluded, a detailed jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the exclu­sion needs to be included in the sys­tem design doc­u­ment­a­tion. Simply decid­ing that the fault can be excluded is NOT ENOUGH! Consider the risk a per­son will be exposed to in the event the fault occurs. If the sever­ity is very high, i.e., severe per­man­ent injury or death, you may not want to exclude the fault even if you think you could. Careful con­sid­er­a­tion of the res­ult­ing injury scen­ario is needed.

Basing a fault exclu­sion on per­son­al exper­i­ence is sel­dom con­sidered adequate, which is why I added the aster­isk (*) above. Look for good stat­ist­ic­al data to sup­port any decision to use a fault exclu­sion.

There is much more inform­a­tion avail­able in IEC 61508 – 2 on the sub­ject of fault exclu­sion, and there is good inform­a­tion in some of the books men­tioned below [0.2], [0.3], and [0.4]. If you know of addi­tion­al resources you would like to share, please post the inform­a­tion in the com­ments!

Definitions

3.1.3 fault
state of an item char­ac­ter­ized by the inab­il­ity to per­form a required func­tion, exclud­ing the inab­il­ity dur­ing pre­vent­ive main­ten­ance or oth­er planned actions, or due to lack of extern­al resources
Note 1 to entry: A fault is often the res­ult of a fail­ure of the item itself, but may exist without pri­or fail­ure.
Note 2 to entry: In this part of ISO 13849, “fault” means ran­dom fault. [SOURCE: IEC 60050?191:1990, 05 – 01.]

Book List

Here are some books that I think you may find help­ful on this jour­ney:

[0]     B. Main, Risk Assessment: Basics and Benchmarks, 1st ed. Ann Arbor, MI USA: DSE, 2004.

[0.1]  D. Smith and K. Simpson, Safety crit­ic­al sys­tems hand­book. Amsterdam: Elsevier/​Butterworth-​Heinemann, 2011.

[0.2]  Electromagnetic Compatibility for Functional Safety, 1st ed. Stevenage, UK: The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2008.

[0.3]  Overview of tech­niques and meas­ures related to EMC for Functional Safety, 1st ed. Stevenage, UK: Overview of tech­niques and meas­ures related to EMC for Functional Safety, 2013.

References

Note: This ref­er­ence list starts in Part 1 of the series, so “miss­ing” ref­er­ences may show in oth­er parts of the series. Included in the last post of the series is the com­plete ref­er­ence list.

[1]     Safety of machinery — Safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems — Part 1: General prin­ciples for design. 3rd Edition. ISO Standard 13849 – 1. 2015.

[2]     Safety of machinery – Safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems – Part 2: Validation. 2nd Edition. ISO Standard 13849 – 2. 2012.

[3]      Safety of machinery – General prin­ciples for design – Risk assess­ment and risk reduc­tion. ISO Standard 12100. 2010.

[4]     Safeguarding of Machinery. 2nd Edition. CSA Standard Z432. 2004.

[5]     Risk Assessment and Risk Reduction- A Guideline to Estimate, Evaluate and Reduce Risks Associated with Machine Tools. ANSI Technical Report B11.TR3. 2000.

[6]    Safety of machinery – Emergency stop func­tion – Principles for design. ISO Standard 13850. 2015.

[7]     Functional safety of electrical/​electronic/​programmable elec­tron­ic safety-​related sys­tems. 7 parts. IEC Standard 61508. Edition 2. 2010.

[8]     S. Jocelyn, J. Baudoin, Y. Chinniah, and P. Charpentier, “Feasibility study and uncer­tain­ties in the val­id­a­tion of an exist­ing safety-​related con­trol cir­cuit with the ISO 13849 – 1:2006 design stand­ard,” Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., vol. 121, pp. 104 – 112, Jan. 2014.

[9]    Guidance on the applic­a­tion of ISO 13849 – 1 and IEC 62061 in the design of safety-​related con­trol sys­tems for machinery. IEC Technical Report TR 62061 – 1. 2010.

[10]     Safety of machinery – Functional safety of safety-​related elec­tric­al, elec­tron­ic and pro­gram­mable elec­tron­ic con­trol sys­tems. IEC Standard 62061. 2005.

[11]    Guidance on the applic­a­tion of ISO 13849 – 1 and IEC 62061 in the design of safety-​related con­trol sys­tems for machinery. IEC Technical Report 62061 – 1. 2010.

[12]    D. S. G. Nix, Y. Chinniah, F. Dosio, M. Fessler, F. Eng, and F. Schrever, “Linking Risk and Reliability — Mapping the out­put of risk assess­ment tools to func­tion­al safety require­ments for safety related con­trol sys­tems,” 2015.

[13]    Safety of machinery. Safety related parts of con­trol sys­tems. General prin­ciples for design. CEN Standard EN 954 – 1. 1996.

[14]   Functional safety of electrical/​electronic/​programmable elec­tron­ic safety-​related sys­tems – Part 2: Requirements for electrical/​electronic/​programmable elec­tron­ic safety-​related sys­tems. IEC Standard 61508 – 2. 2010.

[15]     Reliability Prediction of Electronic Equipment. Military Handbook MIL-​HDBK-​217F. 1991.

[16]     “IFA – Practical aids: Software-​Assistent SISTEMA: Safety Integrity – Software Tool for the Evaluation of Machine Applications”, Dguv​.de, 2017. [Online]. Available: http://​www​.dguv​.de/​i​f​a​/​p​r​a​x​i​s​h​i​l​f​e​n​/​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​a​l​-​s​o​l​u​t​i​o​n​s​-​m​a​c​h​i​n​e​-​s​a​f​e​t​y​/​s​o​f​t​w​a​r​e​-​s​i​s​t​e​m​a​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​jsp. [Accessed: 30- Jan- 2017].

[17]      “fail­ure mode”, 192−03−17, International Electrotechnical Vocabulary. IEC International Electrotechnical Commission, Geneva, 2015.

[18]      M. Gentile and A. E. Summers, “Common Cause Failure: How Do You Manage Them?,” Process Saf. Prog., vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 331 – 338, 2006.

[19]     Out of Control — Why con­trol sys­tems go wrong and how to pre­vent fail­ure, 2nd ed. Richmond, Surrey, UK: HSE Health and Safety Executive, 2003.

[20]     Safeguarding of Machinery. 3rd Edition. CSA Standard Z432. 2016.

[21]     O. Reg. 851, INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS. Ontario, Canada, 1990.

[22]     “Field-​programmable gate array”, En​.wiki​pe​dia​.org, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​F​i​e​l​d​-​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​m​a​b​l​e​_​g​a​t​e​_​a​r​ray. [Accessed: 16-​Jun-​2017].

[23]     Analysis tech­niques for sys­tem reli­ab­il­ity – Procedure for fail­ure mode and effects ana­lys­is (FMEA). 2nd Ed. IEC Standard 60812. 2006.

[24]     “Failure mode and effects ana­lys­is”, En​.wiki​pe​dia​.org, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​F​a​i​l​u​r​e​_​m​o​d​e​_​a​n​d​_​e​f​f​e​c​t​s​_​a​n​a​l​y​sis. [Accessed: 16-​Jun-​2017].

ISO 13849 – 1 Analysis — Part 7: Safety-​Related Software

This entry is part 7 of 9 in the series How to do a 13849 – 1 ana­lys­is

Safety-​Related Software

Up to this point, I have been dis­cuss­ing the basic pro­cesses used for the design of safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems. The under­ly­ing assump­tion is that these tech­niques apply to the design of hard­ware used for safety pur­poses. The remain­ing ques­tion focuses on the design and devel­op­ment of safety-​related soft­ware that runs on that hard­ware. If you have not read the rest of this series and would like to catch up first, you can find it here.

In this dis­cus­sion of safety-​related soft­ware, keep in mind that I am talk­ing about soft­ware that is only inten­ded to reduce risk. Some plat­forms that are not well suited for safety soft­ware, primar­ily com­mon off-​the-​shelf (COTS) oper­at­ing sys­tems like Windows, MacOS and Linux. Generally speak­ing, these oper­at­ing sys­tems are too com­plex and sub­ject to unanti­cip­ated changes to be suit­able for high-​reliability applic­a­tions. There is noth­ing wrong with using these sys­tems for annun­ci­ation and mon­it­or­ing func­tions, but the safety func­tions should run on more pre­dict­able plat­forms.

The meth­od­o­logy dis­cussed in ISO 13849 – 1 is usable up to PLd. At the end of the Scope we find Note 4:

NOTE 4 For safety-​related embed­ded soft­ware for com­pon­ents with PLr = e, see IEC 61508 – 3:1998, Clause 7.

As you can see, for very high-​reliability sys­tems, i.e., PLe/​SIL3 or SIL4, it is neces­sary to move to IEC 61508. The meth­ods dis­cussed here are based on ISO 13849 – 1:2015, Chapter 4.6.

Goals

There are two goals for safety-​related soft­ware devel­op­ment activ­it­ies:

  1. Avoid faults
  2. Generate read­able, under­stand­able, test­able and main­tain­able soft­ware

Avoiding Faults

Fig. 1 [1, Fig. 6] shows the “V-​model” for soft­ware devel­op­ment. This approach to soft­ware design incor­por­ates both val­id­a­tion and veri­fic­a­tion, and when cor­rectly imple­men­ted will res­ult in soft­ware that meets the design spe­cific­a­tions.

If you aren’t sure what the dif­fer­ence is between veri­fic­a­tion and val­id­a­tion, I remem­ber it is this way: Validation means “Are we build­ing the right thing?”, and veri­fic­a­tion means “Did we build the thing right?” The whole pro­cess hinges on the Safety Requirement Specification (SRS), so fail­ing to get that part of the pro­cess right in the begin­ning will neg­at­ively impact both hard­ware and soft­ware design. The SRS is the yard­stick used to decide if you built the right thing. Without that, you are clue­less about what you are build­ing.

Simplified V-model of software safety lifecycle
Figure 1 — Simplified V-​model of soft­ware safety life­cycle

Coming in from the Safety Requirement Specification (also called the safety func­tion spe­cific­a­tion), each step in the pro­cess is shown. The dashed lines illus­trate the veri­fic­a­tion pro­cess at each step. Notice that the actu­al cod­ing step is at the bot­tom of the V-​model. Everything above the cod­ing stage is either plan­ning and design, or qual­ity assur­ance activ­it­ies.

There are oth­er meth­ods that can be used to res­ult in veri­fied and val­id­ated soft­ware, so if you have a QA pro­cess that pro­duces sol­id res­ults, you may not need to change it. I would recom­mend that you review all the stages in the V-​model to ensure that your QA sys­tem has sim­il­ar pro­cesses.

To make set­ting up safety sys­tems sim­pler for design­ers and integ­rat­ors, there are two approaches to soft­ware design that can be used.

Two Approaches to Software Design

There are two approaches to soft­ware design that should be con­sidered:

  • Preconfigured (building-​block style) soft­ware
  • Fully cus­tom­ised soft­ware

Preconfigured Building-​Block Software

The pre­con­figured building-​block approach is typ­ic­ally used for con­fig­ur­ing safety PLCs or pro­gram­mable safety relays or mod­ules. This type of soft­ware is referred to as “safety-​related embed­ded soft­ware (SRESW)” in [1].

Pre-​written func­tion blocks are provided by the device man­u­fac­turer. Each func­tion block has a par­tic­u­lar role: emer­gency stop, safety gate input, zero-​speed detec­tion, and so on. When con­fig­ur­ing a safety PLC or safety mod­ules that use this approach, the design­er selects the appro­pri­ate block and then con­fig­ures the inputs, out­puts, and any oth­er func­tion­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics that are needed. The design­er has no access to the safety-​related code, so apart from con­fig­ur­a­tion errors, no oth­er errors can be intro­duced. The func­tion blocks are veri­fied and val­id­ated (V & V) by the con­trols com­pon­ent man­u­fac­turer, usu­ally with the sup­port of an accred­ited cer­ti­fic­a­tion body. The func­tion blocks will nor­mally have a PL asso­ci­ated with them, and a state­ment like “suit­able for PLe” will be made in the func­tion block descrip­tion.

This approach elim­in­ates the need to do a detailed V & V of the code by the design­ing entity (i.e., the machine build­er). However, the machine build­er is still required to do a V & V on the oper­a­tion of the sys­tem as they have con­figured it. The machine V & V includes all the usu­al fault injec­tion tests and func­tion­al tests to ensure that the sys­tem will behave in as inten­ded in the pres­ence of a demand on the safety func­tion or a fault con­di­tion. The faults that should be tested are those in your Fault List. If you don’t have a fault list or don’t know what a Fault List is, see Part 8 in this series.

Using pre-​configured build­ing blocks achieves the first goal, fault avoid­ance, at least as far as the soft­ware cod­ing is con­cerned. The con­fig­ur­a­tion soft­ware will val­id­ate the func­tion block con­fig­ur­a­tions before com­pil­ing the soft­ware for upload to the safety con­trol­ler so that most con­fig­ur­a­tion errors will be caught at that stage.

This approach also facil­it­ates the second goal, as long as the con­fig­ur­a­tion soft­ware is usable and main­tained by the soft­ware vendor. The con­fig­ur­a­tion soft­ware usu­ally includes the abil­ity to annot­ate the con­fig­ur­a­tions with rel­ev­ant details to assist with the read­ab­il­ity and under­stand­ab­il­ity of the soft­ware.

Fully Customised Software

This approach is used where a fully cus­tom­ised hard­ware plat­form is being used, and the safety soft­ware is designed to run on that plat­form. [1] refers to this type of soft­ware as “Safety-​related applic­a­tion soft­ware (SRASW).” A fully cus­tom­ised soft­ware applic­a­tion is used where a very spe­cial­ised safety sys­tem is con­tem­plated, and FPGAs or oth­er cus­tom­ised hard­ware is being used. These sys­tems are usu­ally pro­grammed using full-​variability lan­guages.

In this case, the full hard­ware and soft­ware V & V approach must be employed. In my opin­ion, ISO 13849 – 1 is prob­ably not the best choice for this approach due to its sim­pli­fic­a­tion, and I would usu­ally recom­mend using IEC 61508 – 3 as the basis for the design, veri­fic­a­tion, and val­id­a­tion of fully cus­tom­ised soft­ware.

Process requirements

Safety-​Related Embedded Software (SRESW)

[1, 4.6.2] provides a laun­dry list of ele­ments that must be incor­por­ated into the V-​model pro­cesses when devel­op­ing SRESW, broken down by PLa through PLd, and then some addi­tion­al require­ments for PLc and PLd.

If you are design­ing SRESW for PLe, [1, 4.6.2] points you dir­ectly to IEC 61508 – 3, clause 7, which cov­ers soft­ware suit­able for SIL3 applic­a­tions.

Safety-​Related Application Software (SRASW)

[1, 4.6.3] provides a list of require­ments that must be met through the v-​model pro­cess for SRASW, and allows that PLa through PLe can be met by code writ­ten in LVL and that PLe applic­a­tions can also be designed using FVL. In cases where soft­ware is developed using  FVL, the soft­ware can be treated as the embed­ded soft­ware products (SRESW) are handled.

A sim­il­ar archi­tec­tur­al mod­el to that used for single-​channel hard­ware devel­op­ment is used, as shown in Fig. 2  [1, Fig 7].

General architecture model of software
Figure 2 — General archi­tec­ture mod­el of soft­ware

The com­plete V-​model must be applied to safety-​related applic­a­tion soft­ware, with all of the addi­tion­al require­ments from [1, 4.6.3] included in the pro­cess mod­el.

Conclusions

There is a lot to safety-​related soft­ware devel­op­ment, cer­tainly much more than could be dis­cussed in a blog post like this or even in a stand­ard like ISO 13849 – 1. If you are con­tem­plat­ing devel­op­ing safety related soft­ware and you are not famil­i­ar with the tech­niques needed to devel­op this kind of high-​reliability soft­ware, I would sug­gest you get help from a qual­i­fied developer. Keep in mind that there can be sig­ni­fic­ant liab­il­ity attached to safety sys­tem fail­ures, includ­ing the deaths of people using your product. If you are devel­op­ing SRASW, I would also recom­mend fol­low­ing IEC 61508 – 3 as the basis for the devel­op­ment and related QA pro­cesses.

 Definitions

3.1.36 applic­a­tion soft­ware
soft­ware spe­cif­ic to the applic­a­tion, imple­men­ted by the machine man­u­fac­turer, and gen­er­ally con­tain­ing logic sequences, lim­its and expres­sions that con­trol the appro­pri­ate inputs, out­puts, cal­cu­la­tions and decisions neces­sary to meet the SRP/​CS require­ments 3.1.37 embed­ded soft­ware firm­ware sys­tem soft­ware soft­ware that is part of the sys­tem sup­plied by the con­trol man­u­fac­turer and which is not access­ible for modi­fic­a­tion by the user of the machinery Note 1 to entry: Embedded soft­ware is usu­ally writ­ten in FVL.
Note 1 to entry: Embedded soft­ware is usu­ally writ­ten in FVL.
3.1.34 lim­ited vari­ab­il­ity lan­guage LVL
type of lan­guage that provides the cap­ab­il­ity of com­bin­ing pre­defined, application-​specific lib­rary func­tions to imple­ment the safety require­ments spe­cific­a­tions
Note 1 to entry: Typical examples of LVL (lad­der logic, func­tion block dia­gram) are giv­en in IEC 61131 – 3.
Note 2 to entry: A typ­ic­al example of a sys­tem using LVL: PLC. [SOURCE: IEC 61511 – 1:2003, 3.2.80.1.2, mod­i­fied.]
3.1.35 full vari­ab­il­ity lan­guage FVL
type of lan­guage that provides the cap­ab­il­ity of imple­ment­ing a wide vari­ety of func­tions and applic­a­tions EXAMPLE C, C++, Assembler.
Note 1 to entry: A typ­ic­al example of sys­tems using FVL: embed­ded sys­tems.
Note 2 to entry: In the field of machinery, FVL is found in embed­ded soft­ware and rarely in applic­a­tion soft­ware. [SOURCE: IEC 61511 – 1:2003, 3.2.80.1.3, mod­i­fied.]
3.1.37 embed­ded soft­ware
firm­ware
sys­tem soft­ware
soft­ware that is part of the sys­tem sup­plied by the con­trol man­u­fac­turer and which is not access­ible for modi­fic­a­tion by the user of the machinery.
Note 1 to entry: Embedded soft­ware is usu­ally writ­ten in FVL.
Field Programmable Gate Array FPGA
A field-​programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integ­rated cir­cuit designed to be con­figured by a cus­tom­er or a design­er after man­u­fac­tur­ing – hence “field-​programmable”. The FPGA con­fig­ur­a­tion is gen­er­ally spe­cified using a hard­ware descrip­tion lan­guage (HDL), sim­il­ar to that used for an application-​specific integ­rated cir­cuit (ASIC). [22]

Book List

Here are some books that I think you may find help­ful on this jour­ney:

[0]     B. Main, Risk Assessment: Basics and Benchmarks, 1st ed. Ann Arbor, MI USA: DSE, 2004.

[0.1]  D. Smith and K. Simpson, Safety crit­ic­al sys­tems hand­book. Amsterdam: Elsevier/​Butterworth-​Heinemann, 2011.

[0.2]  Electromagnetic Compatibility for Functional Safety, 1st ed. Stevenage, UK: The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2008.

[0.3]  Overview of tech­niques and meas­ures related to EMC for Functional Safety, 1st ed. Stevenage, UK: Overview of tech­niques and meas­ures related to EMC for Functional Safety, 2013.

References

Note: This ref­er­ence list starts in Part 1 of the series, so “miss­ing” ref­er­ences may show in oth­er parts of the series. Included in the last post of the series is the com­plete ref­er­ence list.

[1]     Safety of machinery — Safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems — Part 1: General prin­ciples for design. 3rd Edition. ISO Standard 13849 – 1. 2015.

[2]     Safety of machinery – Safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems – Part 2: Validation. 2nd Edition. ISO Standard 13849 – 2. 2012.

[3]      Safety of machinery – General prin­ciples for design – Risk assess­ment and risk reduc­tion. ISO Standard 12100. 2010.

[4]     Safeguarding of Machinery. 2nd Edition. CSA Standard Z432. 2004.

[5]     Risk Assessment and Risk Reduction- A Guideline to Estimate, Evaluate and Reduce Risks Associated with Machine Tools. ANSI Technical Report B11.TR3. 2000.

[6]    Safety of machinery – Emergency stop func­tion – Principles for design. ISO Standard 13850. 2015.

[7]     Functional safety of electrical/​electronic/​programmable elec­tron­ic safety-​related sys­tems. 7 parts. IEC Standard 61508. Edition 2. 2010.

[8]     S. Jocelyn, J. Baudoin, Y. Chinniah, and P. Charpentier, “Feasibility study and uncer­tain­ties in the val­id­a­tion of an exist­ing safety-​related con­trol cir­cuit with the ISO 13849 – 1:2006 design stand­ard,” Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., vol. 121, pp. 104 – 112, Jan. 2014.

[9]    Guidance on the applic­a­tion of ISO 13849 – 1 and IEC 62061 in the design of safety-​related con­trol sys­tems for machinery. IEC Technical Report TR 62061 – 1. 2010.

[10]     Safety of machinery – Functional safety of safety-​related elec­tric­al, elec­tron­ic and pro­gram­mable elec­tron­ic con­trol sys­tems. IEC Standard 62061. 2005.

[11]    Guidance on the applic­a­tion of ISO 13849 – 1 and IEC 62061 in the design of safety-​related con­trol sys­tems for machinery. IEC Technical Report 62061 – 1. 2010.

[12]    D. S. G. Nix, Y. Chinniah, F. Dosio, M. Fessler, F. Eng, and F. Schrever, “Linking Risk and Reliability — Mapping the out­put of risk assess­ment tools to func­tion­al safety require­ments for safety related con­trol sys­tems,” 2015.

[13]    Safety of machinery. Safety related parts of con­trol sys­tems. General prin­ciples for design. CEN Standard EN 954 – 1. 1996.

[14]   Functional safety of electrical/​electronic/​programmable elec­tron­ic safety-​related sys­tems – Part 2: Requirements for electrical/​electronic/​programmable elec­tron­ic safety-​related sys­tems. IEC Standard 61508 – 2. 2010.

[15]     Reliability Prediction of Electronic Equipment. Military Handbook MIL-​HDBK-​217F. 1991.

[16]     “IFA – Practical aids: Software-​Assistent SISTEMA: Safety Integrity – Software Tool for the Evaluation of Machine Applications”, Dguv​.de, 2017. [Online]. Available: http://​www​.dguv​.de/​i​f​a​/​p​r​a​x​i​s​h​i​l​f​e​n​/​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​a​l​-​s​o​l​u​t​i​o​n​s​-​m​a​c​h​i​n​e​-​s​a​f​e​t​y​/​s​o​f​t​w​a​r​e​-​s​i​s​t​e​m​a​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​jsp. [Accessed: 30- Jan- 2017].

[17]      “fail­ure mode”, 192−03−17, International Electrotechnical Vocabulary. IEC International Electrotechnical Commission, Geneva, 2015.

[18]      M. Gentile and A. E. Summers, “Common Cause Failure: How Do You Manage Them?,” Process Saf. Prog., vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 331 – 338, 2006.

[19]     Out of Control — Why con­trol sys­tems go wrong and how to pre­vent fail­ure, 2nd ed. Richmond, Surrey, UK: HSE Health and Safety Executive, 2003.

[20]     Safeguarding of Machinery. 3rd Edition. CSA Standard Z432. 2016.

[21]     O. Reg. 851, INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS. Ontario, Canada, 1990.

[22]     “Field-​programmable gate array”, En​.wiki​pe​dia​.org, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​F​i​e​l​d​-​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​m​a​b​l​e​_​g​a​t​e​_​a​r​ray. [Accessed: 16-​Jun-​2017].

ISO 13849 – 1 Analysis — Part 6: CCF — Common Cause Failures

This entry is part 6 of 9 in the series How to do a 13849 – 1 ana­lys­is

What is a Common Cause Failure?

There are two similar-​sounding terms that people often get con­fused: Common Cause Failure (CCF) and Common Mode Failure. While these two types of fail­ures sound sim­il­ar, they are dif­fer­ent. A Common Cause Failure is a fail­ure in a sys­tem where two or more por­tions of the sys­tem fail at the same time from a single com­mon cause. An example could be a light­ning strike that causes a con­tact­or to weld and sim­ul­tan­eously takes out the safety relay pro­cessor that con­trols the con­tact­or. Common cause fail­ures are there­fore two dif­fer­ent man­ners of fail­ure in two dif­fer­ent com­pon­ents, but with a single cause.

Common Mode Failure is where two com­pon­ents or por­tions of a sys­tem fail in the same way, at the same time. For example, two inter­pos­ing relays both fail with wel­ded con­tacts at the same time. The fail­ures could be caused by the same cause or from dif­fer­ent causes, but the way the com­pon­ents fail is the same.

Common-​cause fail­ure includes com­mon mode fail­ure, since a com­mon cause can res­ult in a com­mon man­ner of fail­ure in identic­al devices used in a sys­tem.

Here are the form­al defin­i­tions of these terms:

3.1.6 com­mon cause fail­ure CCF

fail­ures of dif­fer­ent items, res­ult­ing from a single event, where these fail­ures are not con­sequences of each oth­er

Note 1 to entry: Common cause fail­ures should not be con­fused with com­mon mode fail­ures (see ISO 12100:2010, 3.36). [SOURCE: IEC 60050?191-am1:1999, 04 – 23.] [1]

 

3.36 com­mon mode fail­ures

fail­ures of items char­ac­ter­ized by the same fault mode

NOTE Common mode fail­ures should not be con­fused with com­mon cause fail­ures, as the com­mon mode fail­ures can res­ult from dif­fer­ent causes. [lEV 191 – 04-​24] [3]

The “com­mon mode” fail­ure defin­i­tion uses the phrase “fault mode”, so let’s look at that as well:

fail­ure mode
DEPRECATED: fault mode
man­ner in which fail­ure occurs

Note 1 to entry: A fail­ure mode may be defined by the func­tion lost or oth­er state trans­ition that occurred. [IEV 192 – 03-​17] [17]

As you can see, “fault mode” is no longer used, in favour of the more com­mon “fail­ure mode”, so it is pos­sible to re-​write the common-​mode fail­ure defin­i­tion to read, “fail­ures of items char­ac­ter­ised by the same man­ner of fail­ure.”

Random, Systematic and Common Cause Failures

Why do we need to care about this? There are three man­ners in which fail­ures occur: ran­dom fail­ures, sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures, and com­mon cause fail­ures. When devel­op­ing safety related con­trols, we need to con­sider all three and mit­ig­ate them as much as pos­sible.

Random fail­ures do not fol­low any pat­tern, occur­ring ran­domly over time, and are often brought on by over-​stressing the com­pon­ent, or from man­u­fac­tur­ing flaws. Random fail­ures can increase due to envir­on­ment­al or process-​related stresses, like cor­ro­sion, EMI, nor­mal wear-​and-​tear, or oth­er over-​stressing of the com­pon­ent or sub­sys­tem. Random fail­ures are often mit­ig­ated through selec­tion of high-​reliability com­pon­ents [18].

Systematic fail­ures include common-​cause fail­ures, and occur because some human beha­viour occurred that was not caught by pro­ced­ur­al means. These fail­ures are due to design, spe­cific­a­tion, oper­at­ing, main­ten­ance, and install­a­tion errors. When we look at sys­tem­at­ic errors, we are look­ing for things like train­ing of the sys­tem design­ers, or qual­ity assur­ance pro­ced­ures used to val­id­ate the way the sys­tem oper­ates. Systematic fail­ures are non-​random and com­plex, mak­ing them dif­fi­cult to ana­lyse stat­ist­ic­ally. Systematic errors are a sig­ni­fic­ant source of common-​cause fail­ures because they can affect redund­ant devices, and because they are often determ­in­ist­ic, occur­ring whenev­er a set of cir­cum­stances exist.

Systematic fail­ures include many types of errors, such as:

  • Manufacturing defects, e.g., soft­ware and hard­ware errors built into the device by the man­u­fac­turer.
  • Specification mis­takes, e.g. incor­rect design basis and inac­cur­ate soft­ware spe­cific­a­tion.
  • Implementation errors, e.g., improp­er install­a­tion, incor­rect pro­gram­ming, inter­face prob­lems, and not fol­low­ing the safety manu­al for the devices used to real­ise the safety func­tion.
  • Operation and main­ten­ance, e.g., poor inspec­tion, incom­plete test­ing and improp­er bypassing [18].

Diverse redund­ancy is com­monly used to mit­ig­ate sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures, since dif­fer­ences in com­pon­ent or sub­sys­tem design tend to cre­ate non-​overlapping sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures, redu­cing the like­li­hood of a com­mon error cre­at­ing a common-​mode fail­ure. Errors in spe­cific­a­tion, imple­ment­a­tion, oper­a­tion and main­ten­ance are not affected by diversity.

Fig 1 below shows the res­ults of a small study done by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive in 1994 [19] that sup­ports the idea that sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures are a sig­ni­fic­ant con­trib­ut­or to safety sys­tem fail­ures. The study included only 34 sys­tems (n=34), so the res­ults can­not be con­sidered con­clus­ive. However, there were some start­ling res­ults. As you can see, errors in the spe­cific­a­tion of the safety func­tions (Safety Requirement Specification) res­ul­ted in about 44% of the sys­tem fail­ures in the study. Based on this small sample, sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures appear to be a sig­ni­fic­ate source of fail­ures.

Pie chart illustrating the proportion of failures in each phase of the life cycle of a machine, based on data taken from HSE Report HSG238.
Figure 1 – HSG 238 Primary Causes of Failure by Life Cycle Stage

Handling CCF in ISO 13849 – 1

Now that we under­stand WHAT Common-​Cause Failure is, and WHY it’s import­ant, we can talk about HOW it is handled in ISO 13849 – 1. Since ISO 13849 – 1 is inten­ded to be a sim­pli­fied func­tion­al safety stand­ard, CCF ana­lys­is is lim­ited to a check­list in Annex F, Table F.1. Note that Annex F is inform­at­ive, mean­ing that it is guid­ance mater­i­al to help you apply the stand­ard. Since this is the case, you could use any oth­er means suit­able for assess­ing CCF mit­ig­a­tion, like those in IEC 61508, or in oth­er stand­ards.

Table F.1 is set up with a series of mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures which are grouped togeth­er in related cat­egor­ies. Each group is provided with a score that can be claimed if you have imple­men­ted the mit­ig­a­tions in that group. ALL OF THE MEASURES in each group must be ful­filled in order to claim the points for that cat­egory. Here’s an example:

A portion of ISO 13849-1 Table F.1.
ISO 13849 – 1:2015, Table F.1 Excerpt

In order to claim the 20 points avail­able for the use of sep­ar­a­tion or segreg­a­tion in the sys­tem design, there must be a sep­ar­a­tion between the sig­nal paths. Several examples of this are giv­en for clar­ity.

Table F.1 lists six groups of mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures. In order to claim adequate CCF mit­ig­a­tion, a min­im­um score of 65 points must be achieved. Only Category 2, 3 and 4 archi­tec­tures are required to meet the CCF require­ments in order to claim the PL, but without meet­ing the CCF require­ment you can­not claim the PL, regard­less of wheth­er the design meets the oth­er cri­ter­ia or not.

One final note on CCF: If you are try­ing to review an exist­ing con­trol sys­tem, say in an exist­ing machine, or in a machine designed by a third party where you have no way to determ­ine the exper­i­ence and train­ing of the design­ers or the cap­ab­il­ity of the company’s change man­age­ment pro­cess, then you can­not adequately assess CCF [8]. This fact is recog­nised in CSA Z432-​16 [20], chapter 8. [20] allows the review­er to simply veri­fy that the archi­tec­tur­al require­ments, exclus­ive of any prob­ab­il­ist­ic require­ments, have been met. This is par­tic­u­larly use­ful for engin­eers review­ing machinery under Ontario’s Pre-​Start Health and Safety require­ments [21], who are fre­quently work­ing with less-​than-​complete design doc­u­ment­a­tion.

In case you missed the first part of the series, you can read it here. In the next art­icle in this series, I’m going to review the pro­cess flow for sys­tem ana­lys­is as cur­rently out­lined in ISO 13849 – 1. Watch for it!

Book List

Here are some books that I think you may find help­ful on this jour­ney:

[0]     B. Main, Risk Assessment: Basics and Benchmarks, 1st ed. Ann Arbor, MI USA: DSE, 2004.

[0.1]  D. Smith and K. Simpson, Safety crit­ic­al sys­tems hand­book. Amsterdam: Elsevier/​Butterworth-​Heinemann, 2011.

[0.2]  Electromagnetic Compatibility for Functional Safety, 1st ed. Stevenage, UK: The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2008.

[0.3]  Overview of tech­niques and meas­ures related to EMC for Functional Safety, 1st ed. Stevenage, UK: Overview of tech­niques and meas­ures related to EMC for Functional Safety, 2013.

References

Note: This ref­er­ence list starts in Part 1 of the series, so “miss­ing” ref­er­ences may show in oth­er parts of the series. The com­plete ref­er­ence list is included in the last post of the series.

[1]     Safety of machinery — Safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems — Part 1: General prin­ciples for design. 3rd Edition. ISO Standard 13849 – 1. 2015.

[2]     Safety of machinery – Safety-​related parts of con­trol sys­tems – Part 2: Validation. 2nd Edition. ISO Standard 13849 – 2. 2012.

[3]      Safety of machinery – General prin­ciples for design – Risk assess­ment and risk reduc­tion. ISO Standard 12100. 2010.

[8]     S. Jocelyn, J. Baudoin, Y. Chinniah, and P. Charpentier, “Feasibility study and uncer­tain­ties in the val­id­a­tion of an exist­ing safety-​related con­trol cir­cuit with the ISO 13849 – 1:2006 design stand­ard,” Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., vol. 121, pp. 104 – 112, Jan. 2014.

[17]      “fail­ure mode”, 192−03−17, International Electrotechnical Vocabulary. IEC International Electrotechnical Commission, Geneva, 2015.

[18]      M. Gentile and A. E. Summers, “Common Cause Failure: How Do You Manage Them?,” Process Saf. Prog., vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 331 – 338, 2006.

[19]     Out of Control — Why con­trol sys­tems go wrong and how to pre­vent fail­ure, 2nd ed. Richmond, Surrey, UK: HSE Health and Safety Executive, 2003.

[20]     Safeguarding of Machinery. 3rd Edition. CSA Standard Z432. 2016.

[21]     O. Reg. 851, INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS. Ontario, Canada, 1990.