Chapter

1

Introduction

Genius Modular Redundancy (GMRt) has been developed by GE Fanuc Automation and Silvertech Limited of the United Kingdom. Silvertech has many years experience applying GE Fanuc products to high-integrity safety system applications such as Emergency Shutdown and Fire & Gas Detection in the petrochemical/oil and gas industries. They have captured this expertise in the GMR system software.

GMR is a high-reliability, high-availability redundancy system that provides a scalable solution for many types of redundancy applications, including critical TMR (Triple Modular Redundancy) applications.

TÜV has certified GMR for classification to these requirements: triplex Class 5, duplex Class 4 and 5, and simplex Class 4 according to the DIN V19250/DIN V VDE 081 standards. For use of the GMR system in a TÜV approved safety critical installation, refer to information in Appendix A.

The GMR system is based on standard, off-the-shelf hardware. It utilizes field-proven Series 90-70 PLC and Genius I/O products. Enhancements have been incorporated into the standard PLC CPU, bus controller, and several Genius I/O blocks specifically for use in GMR systems. These enhanced products, together with GMR system software, provide input voting by the PLCs, output voting, support for both discrete and analog I/O, automatic testing of discrete inputs and outputs, and extensive fault-monitoring capabilities for the application program.

A basic GMR system consists of groups of Genius blocks gathering data from multiple or single sensors, multiple PLCs running the same application program, and groups of Genius blocks controlling shared output loads. Communications between the blocks and PLCs and among the PLCs is provided by the Genius bus.

Triple PLCs

Triple Genius Busses

Load

Triple Input Sensors

GMR provides great configuration flexibility. A system can include 1, 2, or 3 PLCs. There can be just one I/O subsystem, as represented above, or more than one. Each I/O subsystem can include 1, 2, or 3 busses. A bus can serve up to a total of 32 devices (I/O blocks, PLCs, and a Hand-held Monitor). The system can include both non-redundant I/O blocks and individual non-redundant points on redundant blocks.

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GE GFK-0787B user manual Chapter Introduction