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Improved efficiency in qualitative fault tree analysis

journal contribution
posted on 2008-09-26, 16:27 authored by Roslyn M. Sinnamon, J.D. Andrews
The fault tree diagram itself is an excellent way of deriving the failure logic for a system and representing it in a form which is ideal for communication to managers, designers, operators, etc. Since the method was first conceived, algorithms to derive the minimal cut sets have worked directly with the fault tree diagram using either bottom-up or top-down approaches. These conventional techniques have several disadvantages when it comes to analysing the fault tree. For complex systems an analysis may produce hundreds of thousands of minimal cut sets, the determination of which can be a very time-consuming process. Also, for large fault trees it may not be possible to evaluate all minimal cut sets, so methods to identify those event combinations which provide the most significant contributions to the system failure are evoked. Such methods include probabilistic or order culling to reduce the problem to a practical size, but they can also create considerable inaccuracies when it comes to evaluating top event probability parameters. This paper describes how the binary decision diagram method can be employed to evaluate the minimal cut sets of a fault tree efficiently and without the need to use approximations such as order culling.

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department

  • Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering

Citation

SINNAMIN, R.M. and ANDREWS, J.D., 1997. Improved efficiency in qualitative fault tree analysis. Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 13 (5), pp 293-298

Publisher

© John Wiley & Sons

Publication date

1997

Notes

This article is Restricted Access. It was published in the journal, Quality and Reliability Engineering International [© John Wiley & Sons] and is also available at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/3680/home

ISSN

0748-8017

Language

  • en

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