Enhancing commercial PCs for safety related applications
In a broad range of industries from automotive to medical manufacture, the use of advanced instrumentation makes their control, supervision and safe monitoring a difficult task. Devices such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and embedded microprocessors have ever increasingly become complicated and require highly specialised expertise for their implementation. In contrast to these, PCs equipped with PLC functionalities have become very popular as they are relatively less expensive and more user-friendly. Yet, such components or systems may often display operational unexpected weaknesses that render them inappropriate for further use in safety or critical applications. Aiming at enhancing commercially available computers in order to comply with stringent safety standards and optimising their dependability, a new system configuration was developed. The optimised PCs including both hardware and software add-ons may open a new market of controlling systems for critical applications at a very low cost and improved usability. Det Norske Veritas (DNV), one of the project partners was already engaged in the field of risk management of systems and software. Within this project, DNV was involved in the preparation procedures for certification to the IEC 61508 standard in relation to the safety integrity the system configuration and its hardware implementation. Additionally, new experience was gained in the certification process for related Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, such as JAVA. Having already established a high profile in the safety area, DNV was able to further develop ship classification rules for control systems. For more information on the project, click at: http://www.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/~iam-kaucher/safe-pc/index.html(opens in new window)
