METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR TRANSFORMING FAULT TREE DIAGRAMS OF ENGINEERING SYSTEMS

摘要

A method of transforming a fault tree diagram of an engineering system. The fault tree diagram comprises a plurality of cut-set matrices, wherein for each cut-set matrix, each column of the cut-set matrix corresponds to an event of the system, and each row of the cut-set matrix indicates a combination of occurred events; and a plurality of logic gates, wherein each logic gate takes as input one or more of the cut-set matrices and/or one or more outputs from other logic gates of the plurality of logic gates. At least one logic gate that has as inputs one or more cut-set matrices only is selected. A set of events is determined, wherein each event corresponds to a column of the one or more cut-set matrices of the selected logic gate. A replacement cut-set matrix for the selected logic gate is then determined, wherein each column of the replacement cut-set matrix corresponds to an event from the set of events, and each row indicates a combination of events obtained from the rows from the one or more cut-set matrices in accordance with the selected logic gate. The selected logic gate is then replaced with the replacement cut-set matrix.