Normative Requirements for Special Applications

Inductive sensors can be designed to meet the prerequisites for use in special areas.

Explicitly increased safety requirements can be caused by certain safety risks typical of the plant—for example, the framework can be set out by European law. This is the case with Directive 2014/34/EU and the Machinery Directive. Safety requirements may also be based on specific requirements of individual countries, such as the China Compulsory Certification (CCC), the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) in Canada, and Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) in the USA. For products to be used in certain environments, they must be approved for those areas of application. Inductive sensors may have approvals for CCC, CSA, or UL.

Hazardous Areas

Inductive sensors may be used in explosion hazardous areas if they have ATEX or IECEx approval of the following type:

• Equipment protection level Ga ... Gc: sensors for gas hazardous areas, Zone 0 … 2,
• Equipment protection level Da ... Dc: sensors for dust hazardous areas, Zone 20 … 22, or
• Equipment protection level Ma or Mb for use in mining (Group I according to 2014/34/EU)

The components must be marked accordingly.

Safety Integrity and Performance Level

To ensure safety integrity in a safety loop of a plant, special inductive safety sensors according to IEC 61508 (functionally safe) and performance level (PL d) according to 2006/42/EC can be used. With appropriate planning and integration in the safety loop of a plant, a level of safety integrity up to SIL 2 or performance level PL d is possible. If two safety sensors are redundant, up to SIL 3/PL e can be achieved.

Pepperl+Fuchs sensors from the NSB* and NSN* series are ideal for this application.

Inductive sensors can be designed to obtain the required E1 type approval, which is a prerequisite for installation in road vehicles.