TABLE OF CONTENTS Fault tree analysis is a technique of reliability and safety analysis and is generally applicable to complex dynamic systems. Fault tree analysis provides an objective basis for analyzing system design, performing trade-off studies, analyzing common mode failures, demonstrating compliance with safety requirements, and justifying system changes and additions.
The concept of fault tree analysis was developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories as a technique with which to perform a safety evaluation of the Minuteman Launch Control System in 1961. Later the Boeing Company modified the concept for computer utilization. It is now widely used in many fields, such as in the nuclear reactor, chemical, and aviation industries.
A fault tree is a model that graphically and logically represents the various combinations of possible events, both faulty and normal, occurring in a system that lead to the top undesired event. Its application can include a complete plant, as well as a System or a subsystem.
Fault tree analysis is of major value in accomplishing the following [1; 2]:
Directing the analysis to ferret out failures deductively.
Pointing out the aspects of the system involved in the failure of interest.
Providing a graphical aid for those in system management who are removed from the system's design changes.
Providing options for qualitative, as well as quantitative, system reliability analysis.
Allowing the analyst to concentrate on one particular system failure at a time.
Providing the analyst with insight into system behavior.
There are three phases in the fault tree analysis process, and these...
