Ch07_Fault tree analysis.pdf

7 Fault Tree Analysis 7.1 INTRODUCTION Fault tree analysis (FTA) is widely performed in the industry to evaluate engineering systems during their design and development, in particular the ones used in nuclear power generation. A fault tree may simply be described as a logical representation of the relationship of primary events that lead to a specified undesirable event called the “top event” and is depicted using a tree structure with OR, AND, etc. logic gates. The fault tree method was developed in the early 1960s by H.A. Watson of Bell Telephone Laboratories to perform analysis of the Minuteman Launch Control System. A study team at the Bell Telephone Laboratories further refined it and Haasl [1] of the Boeing company played a pivotal role in its subsequent development. In 1965 several papers related to the technique were presented at the System Safety Symposium held at the University of Washington, Seattle [1]. In 1974, a conference on “Reliability and Fault Tree Analysis” was held at the University of California, Berkeley [2]. A paper appeared in 1978 providing a comprehensive list of publications on Fault Trees [3]. The three books that described FTA in consider- able depth appeared in 1981 [4–6]. Needless to say, since the inception of the fault tree technique, many people have contributed to its additional developments. This chapter describes different aspects of FTA in considerable depth. 7.2 FTA PURPOSES AND PREREQUISITES There are many purposes in performing FTA, including identifying critical areas and cost-effective improvements, understanding the functional relationship of system failures, meeting jurisdictional requirements, providing input to test, maintenance, and operational policies and procedures, understanding the level of protection that the design concept provides against failures, evaluating performance of sys- tems/equipment for bid-evaluation purposes, providing an integrated picture of some aspects of system operation, confirming the