SIMATIC PCS 7 with Safety Integrated

In the process industries it is not uncommon to find hazardous processes. These hazards may arise from the materials being processed or the process itself may be hazardous. An of these hazards, if not properly addressed, could lead to fatalities. When dealing with hazardous processes the safety of personnel, plant equipment and the environment are utmost importance but it is also paramount that the systems put in place to ensure safety do not themselves compromise the production process through spurious trips.

In order to achieve this combination of safety and fault tolerance a reliable Safety Instrumented System (SIS) is required, which can bring the plant to a safe state when necessary but which can also meet the high availability requirements of the process industries

Safety Integrated for Process Automation provides a comprehensive range of products and services for fail-safe and fault-tolerant applications in the process industry.

Basic process control system and safety instrumented system combined in the process control system, SIMATIC PCS 7

Integrated control & safety

Safety Integrated for Process Automation offers optimum integration of the safety instrumented system into the process control system:The basic process control system (BPCS) and safety instrumented system are based on shared hardware. The modularity and flexibility of Safety Integrated permit individual definition of the degree of integration. The basic process control functions can be executed in one controller (automation system) or in separate controllers.

Integration levels for the safety instrumented system in the

process control system

Use communication standards such as PROFIBUS or Ethernet to easily integrate the Safety Integrated system into every open process control system.

You get the full potential of Safety Integrated in combination with SIMATIC PCS7:

• One engineering system for process control and process safety applications
• A common controller platform for SIMATIC PCS 7 process control and process safety
• Direct and seamless communication between DCS and SIS
• Integrated data management for basic process control and safety-related automation, including process visualization and diagnostics, eliminating the complicated data handling between BPCS and SIS
• Automatic integration of safety-related diagnostics in the operator interface with time stamping
• Integration of safety-related hardware into SIMATIC PCS 7 Asset Management for diagnostics and preventive maintenance

Standard and safety-related       

data are transmitted over the

same bus line with PROFIsafe.                                                      

Safety IntegratedField Bus Technology: PROFIBUS and PROFIsafe

PROFIBUS is the common communication platform of SIMATIC PCS 7 and SIMATIC Safety Integrated. Standard PROFIBUS in combination with the PROFI safe profile is used for safety-related communication between the CPU of the automation system and safety-related process I/O.

PROFIsafe expands the telegrams by the addition of information with which the PROFIsafe communication partners can detect and compensate transmission errors such as delays, incorrect sequences, repetitions, losses, faulty addressing or data falsification.

PROFIsafe is an IEC 61508 certified profile for PROFIBUS DP/PA and PROFINET.With SIL 3 (Safety Integrity Level) and Category 4 according to EN 954-1,PROFIsafe meets the highest safety requirements for process and manufacturing industries. It enables both standard and safety-related communication on a single cable.

Configuration versions for

safety-related systems shown by example of SIMATIC PCS 7 with S7-400FH controllers

Flexible Modular Redundancy™

Thanks to the flexible, scalable fault tolerance of Safety Integrated (Flexible Modular Redundancy™, FMR), the degree of redundancy can be defined separately for each architecture layer, controller, field bus and I/O devices, and matched to the field instrumentation. This enables you to realize custom, fault- tolerant architecture perfectly adapted to the task at hand. It not only provides a higher degree of availability than is possible with conventional redundancy architecture, it also enables comparatively more attractive, cost-effective safety applications since the FMR provides redundancy only where it is needed.

Efficient safety life cycle management

Safety life cycle management for configuration, operation and maintenance of safety applications offers efficient safety life cycle engineering tools. These tools considerably reduce the costs for engineering,commissioning and maintenance.

As an example, there is the F-block library in S7 F systems and SIMATIC Safety Matrix for configuration and programming of the fail-safe S7-400FH controller. The F-block library integrated in S7 F systems contains ready-made function blocks for creating safety-related applications with the CFC or the SIMATIC Safety Matrix based on it.

Safety Matrix: Assigning precisely defined reactions (effects) to occurring events (causes)

SIMATIC Safety Matrix

SIMATIC Safety Matrix, the powerful cause & effect tool for process automation enables significantly faster and more convenient configuration of safety applications. Based on the proven principle of a cause& effect matrix, it is ideally suited for processes in which specific states require specific safety responses. In the risk analysis of a plant, the design engineer can assign exactly defined reactions (effects) to events(causes) occurring in the course of a process. No special programming skills are required; the design engineer can focus fully on the safety requirements of the plant.

Viewer of the Safety Matrix on a SIMATIC PCS7 operator station          

SIMATIC Safety Matrix also offers advantages during the operation phase: The viewer of the SIMATIC Safety Matrix run on the SIMATIC PCS7 operator station provides simple and intuitive operation and monitoring of the safety application during operation. The signal status is shown online in the Cause & Effect Matrix.