Overview - Functional Safety of Machinery (IEC 62061)

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Understand IEC 62061 and the engineering principles behind functional safety of machinery.

Modern machinery increasingly relies on electrical, electronic and programmable electronic control systems to perform safety-related functions. IEC 62061 provides a systematic framework for designing, implementing and validating safety-related control systems for machinery.

This course provides a structured and practical introduction to IEC 62061 and functional safety in machinery applications.

We begin with the fundamentals of machinery safety and explain how IEC 62061 fits into the broader safety standards landscape, including its relationship with ISO 12100 and ISO 13849.

You will then learn how risk assessment leads to the identification of safety functions and how the required Safety Integrity Level (SIL) is determined. We examine how safety requirements are specified and allocated to the elements of a safety-related control system.

From there, the course explores the engineering principles behind system and subsystem design. You will learn about architecture, hardware fault tolerance, safe failure fraction, diagnostic coverage and common cause failures, as well as the probabilistic measures used to evaluate dangerous failures.

The course also addresses systematic safety integrity, software considerations and the additional engineering measures required to maintain confidence in safety-related functionality throughout development.

Finally, we bring the complete process together through verification, validation and a practical machinery example.

Rather than simply presenting individual requirements, this course focuses on understanding the engineering logic behind IEC 62061 and how the different concepts interact throughout the functional safety lifecycle.