Instrument Reliability Information within NAMUR Organization

摘要

Since 2003 Process and Plant Safety with means of Process Control Technology (PCT) is broadly applied in accordance with IEC 61511 (ANSI/ISA-84.00.01) in the process industry. The safety related reliability of a Safety Instrumented Function has to be evaluated quantitatively by calculation. For this reason statistic failure rates were collected loop based on data available in member companies of NAMUR, an International User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries with currently more than 130 member companies (see figure 1). It is the intention to get better instrument reliability data by combining the available data from a large number of companies. Today the data refer to failures in entire loops and do not show failures in instruments. In recommendations NAMUR gives guidance how to collect and to differentiate the data. New developments will move from a loop based collection to a component based collection. Nevertheless the statistic quality of the collected data needs to be improved continually. Therefore it is necessary to increase the number of companies involved in the collection and to extend the network of users.