Hot Keywords: Environmental Testing Environmental Reliability Testing Food Material Testing

Contact GTS

SIL Certification Consulting Services

1. Overview of SIL Certification:

SIL certification (full name Safety Integrity Level) is a third-party assessment, verification, and certification based on functional safety standards such as IEC 61508, IEC 61511, IEC 61513, IEC 13849-1, etc., to evaluate and confirm the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) or Performance Level (PL) of products. SIL certification mainly involves the assessment of documentation management (FSM) for the safety equipment development process, hardware reliability calculation and assessment, software assessment, environmental testing, EMC electromagnetic compatibility testing, etc.

2. Determination of SIL Certification Level:

Safety integrity refers to the average probability of successfully achieving the required instrument safety function under specified conditions and within a specified time. The Safety Integrity Level is used to specify the discrete levels of safety integrity requirements assigned to SIS safety functions, denoted as SIL, and is divided into 4 levels, with SIL4 being the highest level. IEC61508-1 specifies the target failure measure.

When determining safety integrity, all failure factors (hardware random failures and systematic failures) leading to an unsafe state should be included.

The usage mode of safety-related systems, according to the frequency of requirements, can be divided into: low-demand mode (≤1 time/year) and high-demand or continuous mode (>1 time/year). The target failure measures for SIL in low-demand mode and high-demand mode are different, as shown in the table below.

3. SIL Certification Technical Consulting Service Process:

No.	Item	Content
1	Evaluate the Safety Plan, Verification & Validation Plan, and Safety Requirements Specification Documents	Evaluate the completeness and correctness of the safety plan, verification & validation plan, and safety requirements specification documents in accordance with the requirements of the standards. The safety plan shall include all information related to functional safety management or other relevant management documents.
2	Evaluate the Suitability of Each Component	All components selected for the system and those related to safety functions shall comply with IEC 61511 or IEC 61508. The customer (or end-user) selects all components for the system, which are divided into two categories: third-party certified and uncertified. For certified components, suitability will be evaluated based on certificates and technical reports, and it will be verified that the certified products perform as expected in use. For uncertified components, a more detailed analysis will be conducted to assess their suitability for safety applications. The required documents will be discussed in the kick-off meeting.
3	Evaluate the Design	For detailed design documents (including detailed design specifications, FMEA analysis reports, etc.), analyze whether the selected components are correctly installed and used, and whether the design is suitable for the declared SIL level.
4	Document Review	The customer shall provide sufficient documents to ensure that the end-user can install, commission, operate, and maintain the system in accordance with standard requirements, test & maintenance procedures, and change management. Shitong will review the completeness and correctness of these documents.
5	SIL Calculation	Based on available data, Shitong will evaluate the reliability models (e.g., 1002, 2003) and the results of the SIL calculation.
6	Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) and Fault Injection Test	Witness the Factory Acceptance Test and conduct the Fault Injection Test at the customer's site.
7	Issue the Certificate	Issue the certificate, which certifies that the product complies with the relevant standards.