What is the ISO 26262 Functional Safety Standard?

Original Source: www.ni.com; updated Jun 16, 2021

Overview

Safety practices are becoming more regulated as industries adopt a standardized set of practices for designing and testing products. ISO 26262 addresses the needs for an automotive-specific international standard that focuses on safety critical components. ISO 26262 is a derivative of IEC 61508, the generic functional safety standard for electrical and electronic (E/E) systems. This paper covers key components of ISO 26262, and qualification of hardware and software. Additionally, this paper covers ISO 26262 test processes and qualifying tools for ISO 26262 compliance.

Contents

• Background
• Key Components of ISO 26262
• Qualification of Hardware Components
• Qualification of Software Components
• "Proven in Use" Argument
• Applying to Current Processes
• Test Tool Qualification
• Next Steps

Background

Increasing complexity throughout the automotive industry is resulting in increased efforts to provide safety-compliant systems. For example, modern automobiles use by-wire systems such as throttle-by-wire. This is when the driver pushes on the accelerator and a sensor in the pedal sends a signal to an electronic control unit. This control unit analyzes several factors such as engine speed, vehicle speed, and pedal position. It then relays a command to the throttle body. It is a challenge of the automotive industry to test and validate systems like throttle-by-wire. The goal of ISO 26262 is to provide a unifying safety standard for all automotive E/E systems.

The Draft International Standard (DIS) of ISO 26262 was published in June 2009. Since the publication of the draft, ISO 26262 has gained traction in the automotive industry. Because a public draft standard is available, lawyers treat ISO 26262 as the technical state of the art. The technical state of the art is the highest level of development of a device or process at a particular time. According to German law, car producers are generally liable for damage to a person caused by the malfunction of a product. If the malfunction could not have been detected by the technical state of the art, the liability is excluded [German law on product liability (§ 823 Abs. 1 BGB, § 1 ProdHaftG)].

Implementing ISO 26262 allows leveraging a common standard to measure how safe a system will be in service. It also provides the ability to reference specific parts of your system because of a common vocabulary provided by the standard. This falls in line with other safety-critical application areas; a common standard provides a way to measure how safe your system is.

Read it entirely from ni.com, clicking here...