Ensuring Reliability in Safety-Critical Systems

Josef Börcsök
Functional Safety
Basic Principles of Safety-related Systems
2., überarbeitete Auflage 2025
524 Seiten, Broschur
64,- € (Buch)
ISBN 978-3-8007-3337-8

Functional safety is a fundamental aspect of system safety, ensuring that safety-related systems perform their intended functions even under fault conditions. A new book provides an in-depth examination of functional safety, guided by the key international standard IEC 61508, which mandates quantitative proof for residual risk.

With increasing complexity in modern safety-critical systems across industries such as automotive, railways, aerospace, industrial machinery, power generation, and medical technology, ensuring reliability is more challenging than ever. The book explores domain-specific adaptations of IEC 61508, including IEC 61511 (Process Industry), IEC 61513 (Nuclear Power Plants), and IEC 62061 (Machinery), and their role in risk assessment and risk reduction.

Key topics covered in this book include:

• The principles of functional safety and reliability
• Risk assessment methodologies and safety integrity levels (SIL1 to SIL4)
• Hardware and software considerations in safety-critical applications
• Mathematical procedures and models for evaluating safety systems
• Practical examples of functional safety implementation in various industries

As software complexity grows, the potential for faults increases, making it imperative to develop systems that prevent critical failures. This book serves as a valuable resource for engineers, safety professionals, and regulatory experts, offering the theoretical foundations and practical applications necessary to design and maintain safe electrical, electronic, and programmable electronic systems (E/E/PES).

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Josef Börcsök is a professor at the University of Kassel at the Chair of Computer Architecture and System Programming in the Department of Electrical Engineering/ Computer Science. He lectures on microprocessors, computer architectures, real-time operating systems, real-time processing systems and risk analysis of computer systems. He is involved in various national and international standardization committees.

Target group: Technicians and engineers who want to familiarize themselves with the basic structures and working methods of safety-related systems and risk assessments of complex technical systems, as well as students of relevant disciplines