Business profile
For more than 100 years DEUTA has been developing and producing dependable components for safety systems in the railway sector, while considering the entire life- cycle of a product
from development, production and commissioning to a full after-sales service. The safety of people is the focal
C
point of DEUTA’s product development. Its reliable components deliver safety functions up to a safety integrity level (SIL) 4 - an offering that is becoming increasingly important.
An SIL product is required when the issue of ‘functional safety’ comes into play. This is an area concerned with technical solutions to safety-related functions, in order to avoid damage to people and the environment. These safety- triggered reactions should also function when the monitoring circuit malfunctions due to, for example the drop-out of a relay. The area of ‘functional safety’ is
therefore very large, and DEUTA innovations cover the complete SIL-spectrum of vehicle velocity measurement, recording and visualisation.
IconTrust® can be trusted Especially applicable in the field of visualisation Dr. Rudolf Ganz, managing director of DEUTA-WERKE and his team have developed IconTrust®
, a
patented electronic safety circuit for human manchine interfaces, which by means of a simple, innovative ’fingerprint’ comparison monitors the correctness of display data. In addition, the technology enables safe data entry using touch-based operator panels. Because drivers of modern (high
speed) trains carry a large burden of responsibility for passengers, cargo and the expensive rail system itself, operational errors can have serious consequences, and organisational and technical measures must be taken which ensure that the data displayed to the driver is correct at all times, ensuring that the decisions he or she takes are optimal.
Human-machine interface Today, PC driven TFT display units are also increasingly used in the safety- relevant area of human-machine interfaces in trains. The PC technology used has economical and ergonomic advantages in that several functional and comfort elements can be integrated in one user-friendly device, thus saving
July/August 2013 Page 101
lients with safety requirements can expect the company to supervise projects all the way through
construction space. The disadvantage is that potential failure modes can stay undiscovered, leading to the display of wrong data and consequently an operation error. Examples are a failure in the graphic memory, the graphic controller or its software, which results in a frozen display or a data corruption. The driver will not notice the display failure as long as he or she has ‘one’ displayed graphic, which appears plausible. Since the driver cannot validate this in real- time while driving, but has to rely on it at all times and in all conditions, a cockpit display is therefore safety critical. Many applications require - in
line with the certification process - a corresponding verification and assessment process together with appropriate technical measures taken to achieve a defined SIL.
In fact, a random survey of current approaches shows that these measures do not go far enough as they reveal or avoid only parts of the error sources in the units. For example, errors in the graphics memory, graphics controller or its software, which may cause the screen to freeze or color shift, in the majority of cases remain hidden. Also potential errors of the central processor unit, which computes the data and finally generates the graphical representation, have to be
reviewed. DEUTA has been producing HMI
terminals for railway vehicles for around 20 years and in IconTrust®
it has
developed a safe multifunction terminal. Other kinds of technical approaches
have existed for SIL-compliant terminals. These were classed as extremely cost intensive as every change of application software is accompanied by a complex modification process and requires verification. IconTrust®
ensures that the displayed
data is verifiably up-to-date and correct, without the actual application for the display of information needing to be subjected to SIL verification. Because of this independence, the circuit has a multitude of uses without the extensive post-qualification and documented evidence of conformity usually associated with product and process modification.
Hitachi project An HMI display with IconTrust® is
assessed and certified according to SIL 2 to be used in the UK on a Hitachi rail vehicle combined with a Hitachi European Vital Computer (EVC). In this project IconTrust®
can simultaneously
and independently, monitor more than 30 areas, including overlapping areas. When anomalies occur, a corresponding
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148