AUTOMATED FAULT-TREE ANALYSIS FOR HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS

Fault Tree Analysis is a commonly used technique for assessing the rel iability and safety of engineering systems at the design stage but it is tedious and time-consuming to apply. A reconfigurable program is pr esented which utilizes a library of qualitative component models to en able fault tree type analyses of arbitrary hydraulic circuit configura tions. It is applied to the analysis of failures of an experimental ri g and a complex industrial system, and some features of its design and performance are discussed.