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Safety by Design

What is a Bulkhead?

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A bulkhead is a structure that isolates damage to one area. This is a common technique for designing safe and resilient systems, vehicles, equipment and services.

Code

A bulkhead is a software design technique that divides code into independently deployable units such as microservices. For example, the sections of a website can be implemented as separately deployed cloud services. When one page goes down, the rest of the site stays up.

Ships

A bulkhead is a vertical wall in the hull of ships. They originated in the 15th century as a way to keep cargo from shifting in heavy seas. All walls in a modern ships are known as bulkheads. They serve functions such as structural support and dividing space into rooms. Some bulkheads are designed to be watertight and fireproof to isolate damage to one section of ship.

Aircraft

Pressure bulkheads seal the cabin of aircraft for high altitude flight.
Overview: Bulkhead
Type
Definition (1)
Vertical walls in ships and aircraft that serve purposes such as fire, water and pressure containment.
Definition (2)
Structuring code into independently deployable services to improve resilience.
Notes
Bulkhead is also an architectural term that has dozens of different meanings depending on context. For example, retaining walls such as sea walls are commonly known as bulkheads.
Related Concepts
Safety by Design

Safety Design

This is the complete list of articles we have written about safety design.
Active Safety
Defensive Design
Derating
Error Tolerance
Fail-safe
Graceful Degradation
Mistake Proofing
Moving Parts
Passive Risk
Passive Safety
Reliability Engineering
Residual Risk
Safety Controls
Safety Needs
Secondary Risk
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