Alarm Annunciators are a vital tool in safety management. The need for functional safety assessment continuously pushes the technical performance of alarm annunciators upwards. Operator involvement puts a limit on reliability of safety functions but may be beneficial in managing complex demands.
Introduction
Within industrial applications an alarm can be defined as ‘indication requiring an immediate response by the operator’. Such indication normally reflects abnormal condition within the plant process. Alarm annunciators are devices which accept inputs from field sensors (typically via relay contacts eg, from trip transmitters) and provide visual indication, such that the illuminated light or screen can be immediately and uniquely associated with a specific input.
With the number and meaning of various alarms on the plants growing, the need for a systematic approach to alarm handling became evident. The earliest version of ISA18.1 standard [2] of 1977-79 already set the framework and concepts of processing of alarms and describes systematically the sequence of events that should be followed in the annunciator and performed by the operator, from alarm occurrence to eliminating the abnormal condition and resetting the alarm.
In the last two decades the issues of functional safety have also steadily gained importance. The IEC61508 standard [3] introduced a very broad but systematic framework which allows plant engineers to apply the functional safety concepts systematically to all modern control equipment. Following that generic standard, the process industry sector standard IEC61511 was introduced. Both these standards enjoy wide international acceptance. Because of reliability requirements defined for safety related alarms, standalone annunciators lend themselves to a rigorous assessment. This paper therefore focuses on the role of standalone annunciators in functional safety.
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