Safety of Distributed Machine Control Systems

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Table of Contents:

1 Safety Requirements for Machinery
1.1 Safety and Reliability
1.2 Dangerous Situations in Machinery
1.3 Requirements Specification in Practice

2 What is a Distributed Control System?

3 Errors in Distributed Control Systems
3.1 Node Errors
3.2 Bus Errors
3.3 Timing Errors
3.4 Data Consistency Errors
3.5 Initialisation and Restart Errors
3.6 Babbling Idiot Errors
3.7 Configuration Errors

4 Design for Safety in Distributed Control Systems
4.1 Design Considerations
4.2 Documentation

5 CAN and its Error Detection Mechanisms
5.1 The CAN Principle
5.2 CAN Message Format
5.3 Error Detection
5.4 Error Signalling

6 Case Study
6.1 System Description
6.2 Design Considerations
6.3 Safety Aspects of the System

7 Validation of Safety in Distributed Control Systems
7.1 Validation Basics
7.2 Development of an Assessment Method

8 Conclusions and Further Work
8.1 Safety Assessment Method
8.2 Development Work Required

Appendices

A References
A.1 Safety of Machinery
A.2 Dependability
A.3 Dependability terminology and modelling
A.4 Distributed Control Systems
A.5 Software Design Guidelines
A.6 Controller Area Network (CAN)

B Glossary