Funktionssicherheitsanforderungen

Funktionssicherheit, often translated as functional safety, is a critical aspect of engineering that ensures systems operate correctly and safely. It is concerned with the absence of unreasonable risk due to hazards caused by malfunctioning behavior of electrical, electronic, and programmable electronic systems. The core principle is to prevent accidents or mitigate their consequences by identifying potential hazards and implementing appropriate safety measures.

The development of functional safety relies on established standards and methodologies. Prominent among these is the IEC 61508 standard, which provides a framework for functional safety in a broad range of industries. This standard outlines requirements for the entire lifecycle of safety-related systems, from conception and design to operation and decommissioning. Key concepts include the determination of safety integrity levels (SILs), which define the required level of risk reduction for a given system. Higher SILs indicate a greater need for reliability and robustness in the safety functions.

Achieving functional safety involves a systematic approach to hazard analysis and risk assessment. Engineers identify potential failure modes of a system and evaluate the likelihood and severity of the resulting hazards. Based on this assessment, appropriate safety measures are designed and implemented. These measures can include redundancy, diverse systems, monitoring mechanisms, and fail-safe designs, where the system defaults to a safe state in case of failure. Verification and validation processes are crucial to ensure that the implemented safety measures are effective and that the system meets its safety requirements. Functional safety is paramount in industries where system failures can lead to severe injury, loss of life, or significant environmental damage, such as automotive, aerospace, industrial automation, and medical devices.