Performance analysis of safety instrumented systems against cascading failures during prolonged demands

• Published in: Reliability engineering & system safety Vol. 216; p. 107975
• Main Authors: Xie, Lin, Lundteigen, Mary Ann, Liu, Yiliu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Barking Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2021; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Block diagrams; Cascading failure; Demand; Durability; Failure; Industrial safety; Mitigation; Reliability; Reliability block diagram; Reliability engineering; Safety; Safety barriers; Safety instrumented system; System reliability; Demand; Safety instrumented system; Reliability block diagram; Cascading failure; System reliability
• ISSN: 0951-8320; 1879-0836
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2021.107975

•Develop new method fo analyzing SISs in protecting against CAFs in EUC systems.•Evaluate both reliability and durability of SISs with failures in response and after activation.•Improve the cost-effectiveness of SIS deployment in EUC systems. Cascading failures may occur in many technical systems where the failure of one component triggers successive events. Safety barriers like safety instrumented systems are installed in many industries to prevent failures and failure propagations. However, little attention has been paid to the impacts of safety instrumented systems employed to prevent cascading failures in the literature. This paper proposes a novel method for analyzing how the performance of safety instrumented systems influences the protection against and mitigation of cascading failures. It considers SIS reliability and SIS durability in the mitigation of cascading failures. The method uses recursive aggregations based on the reliability block diagram and is verified with Monte Carlo simulations. The application is illustrated with a practical case study, where the proposed method is found beneficial to identify the criticality of safety instrumented systems in consideration of their locations and performance.