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SIS - Safety Instrumented Systems - A Practical View
SIS - Safety Instrumented Systems - A Practical View
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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:
IEC 61508 is divided in 7 parts, where the first 4 are mandatory and the other 3 act
as guidelines:
We have seen in the previous article, in the fourth part, some details on the SIF
Verification Process
Architecture Examples
1. SIL 1
2. SIL 2
Figure 2 – SIF – SIL 2
3.SIL 3