SAFE 605: Principles of Safety

Engineering
 Overview of Safety Engineering
 Safety Engineering Concepts
Safety Engineering
 Safety engineering is devoted to the
application of scientific and engineering
principles and methods to the elimination and
control of hazards.
 Safety engineering is an applied science
strongly related to systems engineering.
 Safety engineering assures that a life-critical
system behaves as needed even when
pieces fail.
Safety Engineering Defined
 To regulate the effects of hazards, it is
necessary to employ a means of controlling
the causes responsible for the presence of
injurious agents. This is the essence of the
practice of safety engineering.
 Grimaldi and Simonds
Application of the Sciences
 Safety engineering applies the sciences to
situations in an attempt to reduce the
likelihood of the occurrence of unwanted
events
 These events include accidents, injuries,
property losses, and financial losses
Civil Engineering
 Safety engineering in the area of civil
engineering includes:
 Knowledge of structural integrity of buildings and
bridges
 An understanding of the needs for controlling air
pollution and water pollution
 Knowledge of the planning required to build safe
roads and highways
Industrial Engineering
 Industrial engineers are responsible for the
design of production processes.
 A major safety issue for industrial engineers
involves the reduction of ergonomic hazards
in the workplace.
Hazard Control Methods
 Engineering controls
 Administrative Controls
 PPE
 Training
Hazard Control Priorities
 Eliminate the hazard
 Reduce the hazard level
 Provide safety devices
 Provide warnings
 Provide safety procedures
Definitions
 A "fault" is said to occur when some piece of
equipment does not operate as designed.
 A "failure" only occurs if a human being (other than
a repair person) has to cope with the situation.
 A "critical" failure endangers one or a few people.
 A "catastrophic" failure endangers, harms or kills a
significant number of people.
Safety engineers also identify different modes of
safe operation:
Definitions
 A "probabilistically safe" system has no single point
of failure, and enough redundant sensors,
computers and effectors so that it is very unlikely to
cause harm (usually "very unlikely" means less than
one human life lost in a billion hours of operation).
 An "inherently safe" system is a clever mechanical
arrangement that cannot be made to cause harm-
obviously the best arrangement, but this is not
always possible.
 A "fault-tolerant" system can continue to operate with faults,
though its operation may be degraded in some fashion.
Fail-Safe Designs
 A "fail-safe" system is one that cannot cause harm
when it fails.
 Fail-passive arrangements: Reduces the system to the lowest
energy level
 Will not operate again until problem is resolved
 Fail-active design: Keeps system in safe operating mode until
corrective action is taken
 Battery operated smoke detector in which an alarm continues to
sound in the event of a failure.
 Fail operational arrangement: Allows system to operate until
corrective action is possible.
 Excess pressure valve design in a pressure vessel allows the
valve to remain open and usable until a replacement valve can
be installed.
Safety Factors
 Expressed as a ratio between strength and
stress.
 A safety factor for a wire rope is the ratio between
the force required to break the rope (nominal
breaking strength) and the rated load (load which
should never be exceeded while lifting
Failure Rate Reduction
 Uses components in a design arrangement
that produces expected lifetimes far beyond
their proposed periods of use.
 Methods of reducing failure rates include:
 Screening
 Redundant arrangements
 Timed replacements
 Derating
Derating
 Reducing stresses upon components thereby
increasing their life and reliability
 Example: Providing fans in computers to
reduce the heat generated by the electronic
components
Screening
 Quality control
 Statistical process control
 Visual inspection and measurement
Timed Replacements
 The practice of timed replacements involves
the establishment of a preventive
maintenance program in which parts which
are subject to fail, are replaced on a schedule
that ensures they are replaced prior to failure.
Redundancy
 Redundacy involves the use of backup
subsystems designed to take over the
operation of a system in the event of failure of
the primary subsystem.
Primary Causes of Engineering
Disasters
 The primary causes of engineering disasters
are usually considered to be:
 human factors (including both 'ethical' failure and
accidents)
 design flaws (many of which are also the result of
unethical practices)
 materials failures
 extreme conditions or environments
 Most commonly and importantly, most
disasters are a combination of these reasons.
A Study of Engineering
Failures
 The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich analyzed
800 cases of structural failure in which 504 people were killed,
592 people injured, and millions of dollars of damage incurred.
 When engineers were at fault, the researchers classified the
causes of failure as follows:
 Insufficient knowledge, 36%
 Underestimation of influence 16%
 Ignorance, carelessness, negligence, 14%
 Forgetfulness, error, 13%
 Relying upon others without sufficient control, 9%
 Objectively unknown situation, 7%
 Imprecise definition of responsibilities, 1%
 Choice of bad quality, 1%
 Other, 3%
Engineering Ethics
 Often, a deficiency in engineering ethics is
found to be one of the root causes of an
engineering failure.
 An engineer, as a professional, has a
responsibility to their client or employer, to
their profession, and to the general public, to
perform their duties in as conscientious a
manner as possible.
Ethical Duty
 An ethical engineer is one who avoids conflicts of
interest, does not attempt to misrepresent their
knowledge so as to accept jobs outside their area of
expertise, acts in the best interests of society and
the environment, fulfills the terms of their contracts
or agreements in a thorough and professional
manner, and promotes the education of young
engineers within their field.
Math Review
 First homework assignment is to “test” your
math skills
 There will not be calculus based formulas in
the course. If you can’t do them, don’t lose
sleep over them
 The course will be using algebra, trig, finite
math, and physics