System safety in Stirling engine development

The DOE/NASA Stirling Engine Project Office has required that contractors make safety considerations an integral part of all phases of the Stirling engine development program. As an integral part of each engine design subtask, analyses are evolved to determine possible modes of failure. The accepted system safety analysis techniques (Fault Tree, FMEA, Hazards Analysis, etc.) are applied in various degrees of extent at the system, subsystem and component levels. The primary objectives are to identify critical failure areas, to enable removal of susceptibility to such failures or their effects from the system and to minimize risk.