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Maintenances Engineering: Fault Tree Analysis

The document discusses fault tree analysis (FTA), which uses diagrams to logically model the relationship between a system failure event and its potential causes. It describes how an FTA is constructed, including defining the top undesired event and building out the tree with intermediate and basic failure events linked by logic gates. The document provides an example FTA problem involving injury risks to an operator from a steam boiler under different fault conditions.

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Surbhi Sarawagi
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206 views

Maintenances Engineering: Fault Tree Analysis

The document discusses fault tree analysis (FTA), which uses diagrams to logically model the relationship between a system failure event and its potential causes. It describes how an FTA is constructed, including defining the top undesired event and building out the tree with intermediate and basic failure events linked by logic gates. The document provides an example FTA problem involving injury risks to an operator from a steam boiler under different fault conditions.

Uploaded by

Surbhi Sarawagi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Maintenances Engineering

Fault Tree Analysis


Fault Tree Analysis
• Diagrammatic representation of all possible fault event
• Logical combination and their relationship to the system failure

Fault tree is the logical model of the relationship of the undesired event to more basic
events.

• The top event of the Fault tree is the undesired event.

• The middle events are intermediate events and the


basic events are at the bottom.

• The logic relationship of events are shown by logic symbols or gates.


Why FTA is carried out
• Identify the cause of a failure.
• Monitor and control safety performance of a complex system.
• To identify the effects of human errors .
• Minimize and optimize resources.
Event of fault tree
Primary event symbols
Gate symbols
Basic Event

AND GATE
Conditioning Event

Intermediate Event OR Gate

Undeveloped Event

Inhibit

External Event
Procedure for FTA

Explore each branch


Define Overall
Define TOP event in successive level of
structure
detail

Perform corrections
Solve the fault tree
if required and make
decision
Case study (Example Question)
• An operator is required to monitor a steam boiler. Under fault conditions, the operator is at risk
from injury from explosion due either (a) the boiler burner being lit when operating with low
water conditions or (b) overpressure. The expected frequencies of the failures that would lead to
either of these effects are given in the table below:

Failure type Frequency (Per Year) Effect


Water level detector 0.1 A
Electrical fault 0.05 A or B
Pressure switch failure 0.1 B

Relief valve failure 0.05 B

Given that the operator is at risk for 20 per cent of the time that the boiler is operating, construct and
quantify a simple fault tree to show the expected frequency of the top event (injury to the operator).
INJURY

And

Boiler Operator Low


Exposed Exposed Pressure

OR OR

0.1 0.02 0.09 1 0.2 0.05 0.1

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