Dependability and Functional Safety: Applications in Industrial Electronics Systems

The paper deals with the dependability theory and the functional safety standards. Dependability is concerned with the ability of a system to deliver the intended service, including the ability to cope with a fault. Functional safety is concerned with the safety-critical systems and focuses on the characteristics of the extra systems added to a system with the purpose of making its operation safe. The paper starts by providing the definitions of system and service. Then the key concepts of the dependability theory are presented, which are the threatens, the attributes and the enforcing techniques. Particular attention is given to the fault-tolerance techniques and the architectures of the fault-tolerant systems. Afterwards the key concepts of the functional safety standards are presented, which are the hazard and risk analyses of a safety-critical system and the safety requirements for the extra systems. At last, two study cases represented by industrial electronics systems are examined from the standpoint of both the dependability and the functional safety.