Fail-safe Control Systems

This book is intended to provide an introduction to and an overview of the techniques and methodologies involved in the design and and application of fail-safe control systems and emergency management. The book is aimed at practising engineers, project managers and engineering students who have a basic knowledge of computers, control systems and some mathematics and who wish to become informed about the various aspects of fail-safe control. The book is based on industrial problems and industrial practice and many of the chapters are founded on the description of industrial procedures employed to deal with actual problem areas. The text aims to provide an overall balanced perspective on the theme of fail-safe control and may be used as a series of reference articles for industrial uptake or as support material on study courses in which safety in control forms an important aspect. The book begins with a brief theoretical and practical introduction to the subject and this is followed by a look at software fault tolerance. This includes a consideration of operator support systems for fault diagnosis and information displays.
The following sections are concerned with various aspects of fault tolerant control systems and fault diagnosis techniques and include a description of the prediction of failures by the use of reliability analyses and performance simulation. The final chapters look at emergency management and give an insight into the use of expert systems in safety critical systems. This leads on to the more general field of intelligent control systems and then on to a consideration of intelligent system control. Finally the book investigates how advanced control systems can be safely incorporated to meet desired objectives in terms of quality control and security.