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Industrial technology, indexed.
Industrial automation · manufacturing · OT — updated 2026-09-23

Fail-safe

Failure behavior that brings a process to its defined safe state.

A design that moves equipment to a defined safer state when power, signal, communications, or a component fails. The safe state is process-dependent: de-energize-to-trip is common, but not universally correct.

See also: Functional safety · Safety relay · Safety instrumented function (SIF)

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