faultsafe
Faultsafe is a term used in safety engineering to describe systems and software designed to ensure safe behavior in the presence of faults. It combines aspects of fail-safety, which places the system into a safe state after a fault, with fault tolerance, which allows continued operation despite faults. In practice, faultsafe design aims to prevent unsafe states, detect faults promptly, isolate them, and transition systems to deterministic, safe modes.
Design principles include defining safe states, redundancy, and diversity to avoid common-mode failures, continuous health monitoring,
Common implementation patterns include redundant hardware with voting logic (such as triple modular redundancy), software health
Applications span aviation, automotive and railway systems, medical devices, industrial control, and critical software services. Certification
Critics note that faultsafe increases complexity and cost, and that safety gains depend on rigorous implementation,