Identify and analyze system failures by working backward from an unwanted event to find multiple causes.
Notes
- "To understand what will happen tomorrow, you must understand today's causes." - Leo Tolstoy
Story
FTA is a deductive method used in reliability engineering to determine potential equipment failures based on a single failure or ‘top event.’ It helps identify combinations of system component faults that can cause the top event.
🌳 Fault Tree Analysis starts with a top-level event, such as system failure or safety issue. It then branches out into sub-events, gates (AND/OR), and basic events to depict combinations of component failures leading to the top event.
TakeAways
📌 Fault Tree Analysis helps understand and prevent system failures by identifying potential causes. 💡 Important Information:
- AND gate: All inputs must fail for the output to fail.
- OR gate: Only one input needs to fail for the output to fail.
- 🔍 Key Data:
- Fault tree analysis is used in various industries, including aerospace, automotive, and chemical processing.
- It’s often combined with other 🔂 Reliability engineering methods like FMEA.
Process
- 🌳 Identify Top Event: Define the unwanted system event or failure to analyze.
- 🔍 Create Fault Tree: Branch out from the top event into sub-events, gates, and basic events using logical symbols (AND/OR).
- Basic events: component failures, human errors, external factors.
- Gates: combine events logically based on their relationships.
- ⚙️ Assign Probabilities/Frequencies: Where possible, quantify each event with probabilities or frequencies to evaluate system reliability.
- 💭 Evaluate Fault Tree: Use software tools or manual calculations to determine the probability/frequency of the top event occurrence.
- ❌ Identify Mitigation Strategies: Based on findings, develop strategies to reduce or eliminate identified failure causes.
Thoughts
- 🧠 Holistic Approach: Fault tree analysis considers all potential component failures and their logical relationships.
- 🛑 Proactive Problem-Solving: By identifying weaknesses proactively, FTA helps prevent system downtime and safety incidents.