Spurious activations of safety-instrumented systems

Abstract

In order to clarify the spurious concept, it is necessary to study failure classification first of all. Then different categories of spurious activation has been described and consequences of them studied through some examples.

Since the rate of spurious activation is considered important, a literature study has been carried out to find out what has been done so far. In addition proposed formulas are discussed and compared.

Since beta-factor is contributing the most with respect to safe failures, it was decided to propose a method which determines in order to reduce spurious trip rate. A suitable case study was chosen based on the discussion with the supervisor of the thesis. Through the process of the work, topics which require further work were identified and described.