SIS - Safety Instrumented Systems - A Practical View

SIS - Safety Instrumented Systems - A practical
view
The Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) are the systems responsible for the operating safety
and ensuring the emergency stop within the limits considered as safe, whenever the
operation exceeds such limits. The main objective is to avoid accidents inside and outside
plants, such as fires, explosions, equipment damages, protection of production and property
and, more than that, avoiding life risk or personal health damages and catastrophic impacts
to community. It should be clear that no system is completely immune to failures and, even
in case of failure; it should provide a safe condition.
For several years, the safety systems were designed according to the German
standards (DIN V VDE 0801 and DIN V 19250), which were well accepted for years
by the global safety community and which caused the efforts to create a global
standard, IEC 61508, which now works as a basis for all operational safety regarding
electric, electronic systems and programmable devices for any kind of industry. Such
standard covers all safety systems with electronic nature.
Products certified according to IEC 61508 should basically cover 3 types of failures:
 Random hardware failures

 Systematic failures
 Common causes failures
IEC 61508 is divided in 7 parts, where the first 4 are mandatory and the other 3 act
as guidelines:
 Part 1: General requirements

 Part 2: Requirements for E/E/PE safety-related systems
 Part 3: Software requirements
 Part 4: Definitions and abbreviations
 Part 5: Examples of methods for the determination of safety integrity levels
 Part 6: Guidelines on the application of IEC 61508-2 and IEC 61508-3Part 7:
Overview of techniques and measures
Such standard systematically covers all activities of a SIS (Safety Instrumented

System) life cycle and is focused on the performance required from a system, that is,
once the desired SIL level (safety integrity level) is reached, the redundancy level
and the test interval are at the discretion of who specified the system.
IEC61508 aims at potentializing the improvements of PES (Programmable Electronic
Safety, where the PLCs, microprocessed systems, distributed control systems,
sensors, and intelligent actuators, etc. are included) so as to standardize the
concepts involved.
The SIS complexity level depends a lot on the process considered. Heaters,
reactors, cracking columns, boilers, and stoves are typical examples of equipment
requiring safety interlock system carefully designed and implemented.
The appropriate operation of a SIS requires better performance and diagnosis
conditions compared to the conventional systems. The safe operation in a SIS is
composed by sensors, logic programmers, processers and final elements designed
with the purpose of causing a stop whenever safe limits are exceeded (for example,
process variables such as pressure and temperature over the very high alarm limits)
or event preventing the operation under unfavorable conditions to the safe operation
conditions.
Typical examples of safety systems:
 Emergency Shutdown System

 Safety Shutdown System
 Safety Interlock System
 Fire and Gas System
We have seen in the previous article, in the fourth part, some details on the SIF
Verification Process
SIF Typical Solutions (Safety Instrumented

Function)
How to determine the architecture?
 SIF architecture is decided by the failure tolerance of its components.

 It may reach a SIL higher level using redundancy.
 The number of pieces of equipment will depend on the reliability of each component
defined in its FMEDA (Failure Modes, Effects and Diagnostic Analysis).
 The three commonest architectures are:
 Simplex or voting 1oo1 (1 out of 1)
 Duplex or voting 1oo2 or 2oo2
 Triplex or voting 2oo3
Simplex or voting 1oo1 (1 out of 1)

The voting principle 1oo1 involves a single channel system, and is normally
designed for low level safety applications. Immediately results in the loss of safety
function or process closure.
Duplex or voting 1oo2 or 2oo2

The voting principle 1oo2 was developed to improve the performance of safety
integrity of safety systems based on 1oo1. If a failure occurs in a channel, the other
is still capable of developing a safety function. Unfortunately, such concept does not
improve the rate of false trips. Even worst, the probability of false trip is almost
doubled.
2oo2: The main disadvantage of a single safety system (that is, non-redundant) is
that the only failure immediately leads to a trip. The duplication of channels in a 2oo2
application significantly reduces the probability of a false trip, as both channels have
to fail in order the system is placed under shutdown. On the other side, the system
has the disadvantage that the probability of failure on demand is twice higher than
that of a single channel.
Triplex or voting 2oo3

2oo3: In that voting, there are three channels, two requiring being ok in order to
operate and comply with safety functions. The 2oo3 voting principle is better applied
when there is a complete physical separation of microprocessors. However, that
requires they are located in three different modules. Although the most recent
systems have a higher diagnosis level, safety systems based on 2003 voting still
keep the disadvantage of probability of failure on demand, which is approximately
three times higher that those of the 1oo2-based systems.
Architecture Examples
1. SIL 1
Figure 1 – SIF – SIL 1
2. SIL 2
3.SIL 3

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SIS - Safety Instrumented Systems - A practical

 Random hardware failures

 Part 1: General requirements

Such standard systematically covers all activities of a SIS (Safety Instrumented

 Emergency Shutdown System

SIF Typical Solutions (Safety Instrumented

 SIF architecture is decided by the failure tolerance of its components.

Simplex or voting 1oo1 (1 out of 1)

Duplex or voting 1oo2 or 2oo2

Triplex or voting 2oo3

Figure 1 – SIF – SIL 1

Figure 3 – SIF – SIL 3

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