Hot Spot - EN Draft Standard on Functional Safety of Safety-related Automated Industrial Valves

What is it?
CEN TC 69 has been working on the development of a new EN standard covering functional safety of safety-related automated valves for a number of years as a preliminary work item. This work has now reached the point where it is being proposed as a formal work item which will be decided by a ballot. The current draft standard is attached for review and comment by BVAA members.

This standard describes a methodology to avoid systematic faults allowing system components to conform to the targeted Safety Integrity Level. The standard applies to automated industrial valve packages that are used as final elements in a safety instrumented system. It can be applied to single components (e.g. valve, actuator or mechanical parts of solenoid valves) or to assemblies of several of these components and interconnecting parts (e.g. gears, adaptors, brackets, etc.).

The standard does not apply to manually operated valves or automatic valves such as safety valves that are not assessed and operated according to functional safety principles.

Why is it Important?
This standard is important because it provides methods to assess the performance of mechanical components, like valves used in safety instrumented systems, in order to provide a SILS rating for the safety system. This standard is the first document to address in detail the methods to be used for assessing and calculating the functional safety performance of mechanical devices like valves and actuator systems, particularly with respect to their reliability and failure rates.

Adoption of the final standard by end users and system integrators will require valve and actuator manufacturers to follow the prescribed reliability testing and failure analysis methodology when assigning functional safety related performance ratings to their products. It is important that the proposed requirements are reviewed by manufacturers to ensure that they are both practical and effective to apply to their products.

If BVAA members have any comments on the attached draft standard then please submit them to the secretariat by 29-10-21. Comments received will be considered by the BVAA SILS TEG when submitting the BVAA response to BSI prior to the close of the CEN ballot.

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Hot Spots are intended to alert members and provide a brief overview of new standards, activities or procedures that are being introduced in the industry. If there is key information missing that would be helpful, please let us know so that we can improve our future service.

Please note: this Hotspot is for information purposes and we invite comments from BVAA members only. Please also note that at time of publication ballots may be closed. For more information please contact the Secretariat.

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