The book highlights the major international standards that are used to support compliance with EU regulations and uses these standards as a basis for the design procedures. It looks at the risk assessment processes used to identify hazards and to quantify the risks inherent in a machine. It introduces the concepts of safety categories as defined by standard EN954-1 (Safety of Machinery) and illustrates the principles of failsafe design, fault tolerance and self-testing.
It also provides an introduction to machinery protection devices such as guards, enclosures with interlocks and guard-monitoring relays, locking systems, safety mats, photo-electric and electro-sensitive principles and the application of light curtains, a study of Safety Control System techniques, and introduces the principles of safety-certified PLCs.
Dave Macdonald has throughout his career been involved in the application of instrumentation and control technology to industrial and chemical processes. As a senior instrument engineer with AECI Ltd he specialised in managing the complete design cycle for process control systems from conceptual design to commissioning. He has also developed and lectured a post-graduate course in Industrial Control Systems. Dave has been closely involved in hazard studies for new chemical plants and in the implementation of safety instrumented systems. His expertise ranging from field instrumentation to software quality assurance is particularly relevant to this subject.. In the past few years Dave has lectured on Safety Instrumentation and related topics to many hundreds of Engineers and Technicians in Ireland, Canada the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.