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    A Ball Valve With Safe Failures

    Uploaded by

    Luc Schram
    The document discusses potential failures of ball valves and questions how a certification body could claim a ball valve has safe failures. It analyzes the types of failures a ball valve could experience and argues none would qualify as a safe failure. It advises users to carefully evaluate any claims on a certificate and not rely on information that does not make logical sense.

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    A Ball Valve With Safe Failures

    Uploaded by

    Luc Schram
    36 views1 page
    The document discusses potential failures of ball valves and questions how a certification body could claim a ball valve has safe failures. It analyzes the types of failures a ball valve could experience and argues none would qualify as a safe failure. It advises users to carefully evaluate any claims on a certificate and not rely on information that does not make logical sense.

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    ball valve dangerous failures

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    The document discusses potential failures of ball valves and questions how a certification body could claim a ball valve has safe failures. It analyzes the types of failures a ball valve could experience and argues none would qualify as a safe failure. It advises users to carefully evaluate any claims on a certificate and not rely on information that does not make logical sense.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    36 views1 page

    A Ball Valve With Safe Failures

    Uploaded by

    Luc Schram
    The document discusses potential failures of ball valves and questions how a certification body could claim a ball valve has safe failures. It analyzes the types of failures a ball valve could experience and argues none would qualify as a safe failure. It advises users to carefully evaluate any claims on a certificate and not rely on information that does not make logical sense.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    A Ball Valve with Safe Failures! Really?

    Iwan van Beurden, CFSE


    Monday, July 22, 2013

    Look at the photo. What do you see? I see a ball valve with:

     a valve body

     a ball

     a stem that can turn the ball

    What are the high level potential failures for a ball valve?

     Stem stuck, can no longer turn (dangerous)

     Stem break, can no longer turn (dangerous)

     Ball stuck, can no longer turn (dangerous)

     Leakage/Housing fracture (dangerous or no effect based on the material


    going through the valve)

    What is the rough definition of a safe failure? A failure that causes a spurious trip, i.e. a failure that
    initiates the safety function without a demand from the process. Can you see any potential safe failure for
    a ball valve? I can’t; not in close to trip or in open to trip applications.

    Then why do end-users and engineering companies blindly accept a third party certificate from a German
    Certification Body where the ball valve is supposed to have safe failures? The information on the
    certificate does not make sense. If the analysis that resulted in the certificate does not make sense, why
    would you trust any data on the certificate itself? Is it because the claimed dangerous failure rate is an
    order of magnitude lower than the failure rate exida concluded for a similar device through its predictive
    analysis methodology?

    In this particular case, reviewing the ball valve does not yield any indication why this specific device
    would be any better than other devices we have analyzed, definitely not an order of magnitude.

    Before you use any information from a certificate, ask yourself if it makes sense. If it does not, don’t use
    the information, you are fooling yourself. You are calculating results based on bogus input. Garbage in is
    garbage out. Check out exida’s Safety Automation Element List for an overview of safety certified
    equipment with adequate failure information from exida as well as other 3rd party assessors.

    https://www.exida.com/Blog/A-Ball-Valve-with-Safe-Failures-Really

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