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Click Below for Additonal SIL Information
Topics
 Articles: SIL
101 | SIL
102 | SIL
103 | SIL
104 | SIL
105
Calculating
SIL Suitability Levels
Functional
Safety Standards
Choosing
an SIL System
LOPA:
Layer of Protection Analysis
 SIL
101:
How Safe Do I Need to Be?
The global importance of SIL
(Safety Integrity Levels) has grown substantially in the oil/gas,
petrochemical and other process industries over the last 10 years.
However, for many end users, systems integrators, and product vendors,
SIL is still a somewhat ambiguous concept that often is misinterpreted
and incorrectly implemented. In order to fully understand SIL and
its implications, it is important to grasp the overarching concept
known as Functional Safety, and how it applies to Safety Instrumented
Systems (SIS) within the process industries.
Functional Safety and SIS Background
Functional Safety, as defined by IEC standard 61508, is the safety
that control systems provide to an overall process or plant. The concept
of Functional Safety was developed in response to the growing need
for improved confidence in safety systems. Major accidents around
the world, as well as the increasing use of electrical, electronic
or programmable electronic systems to carry out safety functions,
have raised awareness and the desire to design safety systems in such
a way as to prevent dangerous failures or to control them when they
arise. Industry experts began to address functional safety and formalize
an approach for reducing risk in the process plant environment through
the development of standards IEC 61508, IEC 61511, and ANSI/ISA 84.
Previous safety standards were generally prescriptive in nature, not
performance based. An emphasis on quantitative risk reduction, life-cycle
considerations, and general practices make these standards different
from their predecessors. Functional Safety is a term used to describe
the safety system that is dependent on the correct functioning of
the logic solver, sensors, and final elements to achieve a desired
risk reduction level. Functional Safety is achieved when every safety
function is successfully carried out and the process risk is reduced
to the desired level.
A Safety Instrumented System is designed to prevent or mitigate hazardous
events by taking a process to a safe state when predetermined conditions
are violated. Other common terms for SISs are safety interlock systems,
emergency shutdown systems (ESD), and safety shutdown systems (SSD).
Each SIS has one or more Safety Instrumented Functions (SIF). To perform
its function, a SIF loop has a combination of logic solver(s), sensor(s),
and final element(s). Every SIF within a SIS will have a SIL level.
These SIL levels may be the same, or may differ, depending on the
process. It is a common misconception that an entire system must have
the same SIL level for each safety function.
Safety Integrity Level
SIL stands for Safety Integrity Level. A SIL is a measure of safety
system performance, in terms of probability of failure on demand (PFD).
This convention was chosen based on the numbers: it is easier to express
the probability of failure rather than that of proper performance
(e.g., 1 in 100,000 vs. 99,999 in 100,000). There are four discrete
integrity levels associated with SIL: SIL 1, SIL 2, SIL 3, and SIL
4. The higher the SIL level, the higher the associated safety level,
and the lower probability that a system will fail to perform properly.
As the SIL level increases, typically the installation and maintenance
costs and complexity of the system also increase. Specifically for
the process industries, SIL 4 systems are so complex and costly that
they are not economically beneficial to implement. Additionally, if
a process includes so much risk that a SIL 4 system is required to
bring it to a safe state, then there is a fundamental problem in the
process design that needs to be addressed by a process change or other
non-instrumented method.
It is a very common misconception that individual products or components
have SIL ratings. Rather, products and components are suitable for
use within a given SIL environment, but are not individually SIL rated.
SIL levels apply to safety functions and safety systems (SIFs and
SISs). The logic solvers, sensors, and final elements are only suitable
for use in specific SIL environments, and only the end user can ensure
that the safety system is implemented correctly. The equipment or
system must be used in the manner in which it was intended in order
to successfully obtain the desired risk reduction level. Just buying
SIL 2 or SIL 3 suitable components does not ensure a SIL 2 or SIL
3 system.
Risk Management and Selecting
a SIS or SIL Level
The identification of risk tolerance is subjective and site-specific.
The owner / operator must determine the acceptable level of risk to
personnel and capital assets based on company philosophy, insurance
requirements, budgets, and a variety of other factors. A risk level
that one owner determines is tolerable may be unacceptable to another
owner.
When determining whether a SIL 1, SIL 2, or SIL 3 system is needed,
the first step is to conduct a Process Hazard Analysis to determine
the functional safety need and identify the tolerable risk level.
After all of the risk reduction and mitigation impacts from the Basic
Process Control System (BPCS) and other layers of protection are taken
into account, a user must compare the residual risk against their
risk tolerance. If there is still an unacceptably high level of risk,
a risk reduction factor (RRF) is determined and a SIS / SIL requirement
is calculated. The RRF is the inverse of the Probability of Failure
on Demand for the SIF / SIS. The SIL level equals the number of zeros
in the minimum Risk Reduction Factor. With SIL 2, for example, the
minimum Risk Reduction Factor is 100 (see table below on next page).
Selecting the appropriate SIL level must be done carefully. Costs
increase considerably to achieve higher SIS / SIL levels. Typically
in the process industry, companies accept SIS designs up to SIL 2.
If a Process Hazard Analysis indicates a requirement for a SIL 3 SIS,
owners will usually require the engineering company to re-design the
process to lower the intrinsic process risk.
| Safety Integrity Level |
Risk Reduction Factor |
Probability of Failure
on Demand |
| SIL 4 |
100,000 to 10,000 |
10-5 to 10-4
|
| SIL 3 |
10,000 to 1,000 |
10-4
to 10-3
|
| SIL 2 |
1,000 to 100 |
10-3
to 10-2 |
| SIL 1 |
100 to 10 |
10-2
to 10-1 |
Continue
article here.
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