scholarly journals Forensic Engineering Use Of Fault Tree Analysis

Author(s):  
Frank H. Johnson ◽  
DeWitt William E.

Analytical Tools, Like Fault Tree Analysis, Have A Proven Track Record In The Aviation And Nuclear Industries. A Positive Tree Is Used To Insure That A Complex Engineered System Operates Correctly. A Negative Tree (Or Fault Tree) Is Used To Investigate Failures Of Complex Engineered Systems. Boeings Use Of Fault Tree Analysis To Investigate The Apollo Launch Pad Fire In 1967 Brought National Attention To The Technique. The 2002 Edition Of Nfpa 921, Guide For Fire And Explosion Investigations, Contains A New Chapter Entitled Failure Analysis And Analytical Tools. That Chapter Addresses Fault Tree Analysis With Respect To Fire And Explosion Investigation. This Paper Will Review The Fundamentals Of Fault Tree Analysis, List Recent Peer Reviewed Papers About The Forensic Engineering Use Of Fault Tree Analysis, Present A Relevant Forensic Engineering Case Study, And Conclude With The Results Of A Recent University Study On The Subject.

Author(s):  
MARY ANN LUNDTEIGEN ◽  
MARVIN RAUSAND

This article presents a practical approach to reliability assessment of a complex safety instrumented system that is susceptible to common cause failures. The approach is based on fault tree analysis where the common cause failures are included by post-processing the minimal cut sets. The approach is illustrated by a case study of a safety instrumented function of a workover control system that is used during maintenance interventions into subsea oil and gas wells. The case study shows that the approach is well suited for identifying potential failures in complex systems and for including design engineers in the verification of the reliability analyses. Unlike many software tools for fault tree analysis, the approach gives conservative estimates for reliability. The suggested approach represents a useful extension to current reliability analysis methods.


Author(s):  
Rajkumar B. Patil ◽  
Digvijay A. Mhamane ◽  
Pruthwiraj B Kothavale ◽  
Basavraj Kothavale

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florin Nicolae ◽  
A. Cotorcea ◽  
Marian Ristea ◽  
Dinu Atodiresei

Abstract The work integrates the human error term in the broader concept of human performance analysis. The main issues associated with human error and human reliability are highlighted step by step, resulting from the review of literature, from the perspective of the relationship between risk and safety. To assess the risks arising from human error and to reduce vulnerability of work, methods derived from the probabilistic assessment of the work safety systems are used. To identify the risks caused by the human error, the authors propose the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) method. The paper reveals the way the method is used for identifying the critical subsystems for the functioning of a given system and analyzes how unwanted events and their causes arise and occur. Also, a case study that is investigated throuhg the FTA method and that consists in the analysis of an accident that occurred in Evangelos Florakis naval logistics base from Cyprus, is presented.


Author(s):  
Jonas Pavasson ◽  
Magnus Karlberg

The possibility of estimating reliability of hardware, both for components and systems, is important in engineering design, since many failures result in substantial impact on safety or functional requirements. Existing reliability estimation methods require measured or estimated input data which can be difficult to retrieve. The objective of this paper is therefore to derive a simulation-driven method, including variation management, for combining deterministic simulations with Fault Tree Analysis, to estimate system reliability when measured data is not available. The research work started with a literature survey followed by description of a typical as-is situation and definition of a to-be scenario. Then, a simulation-driven method was derived and verified by a case study. In particular, the system used for the case study was modeled and simulated as a transient dynamical system to derive information about loads on components. It was found that deterministic simulations can be used to produce relevant input data for fault tree analysis. The derived simulation-driven system reliability estimation method includes variation management and can be used for evaluation of concepts in the early stages of product development when limited measurement data is available.


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