What is FAIL-SAFE?

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What does FAIL-SAFE mean? FAIL-SAFE meaning - FAIL-SAFE definition - FAIL-SAFE explanation. What is the meaning of FAIL-SAFE? What is the definition of FAIL-SAFE? What does FAIL-SAFE stand for? What is FAIL-SAFE meaning? What is FAIL-SAFE definition?

A fail-safe in engineering is a design feature or practice that in the event of a specific type of failure, inherently responds in a way that will cause no or minimal harm to other equipment, the environment or to people.

A system's being "fail-safe" means not that failure is impossible or improbable, but rather that the system's design prevents or mitigates unsafe consequences of the system's failure. That is, if and when a "fail-safe" system "fails", it is "safe" or at least no less safe than when it was operating correctly.

Since many types of failure are possible, failure mode and effects analysis is used to examine failure situations and recommend safety design and procedures.

Some systems can never be made fail safe, as continuous availability is needed. For example, loss of engine thrust in flight is dangerous. Redundancy, fault tolerance, or recovery procedures are used for these situations (e.g. multiple independent controlled and fuel fed engines). This also makes the system less sensitive for the reliability prediction errors or quality induced uncertainty for the separate items. On the other hand, failure detection & correction and avoidance of common cause failures becomes here increasingly important to ensure system level reliability.