Analysis of non-coherent fault trees using ternary decision diagrams

Risk and safety assessments performed on potentially hazardous industrial systems commonly utilize fault tree analysis (FTA) to forecast the probability of system failure. The type of logic for the top event is usually limited to AND and OR gates, which leads to a coherent fault tree structure. In non-coherent fault trees, the working states of components as well as their failures contribute to the failure of the system. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of non-coherent fault trees can introduce further difficulties over and above those seen in the coherent case. It is shown that the binary decision diagram (BDD) method can be used for this type of assessment. The BDD approach can improve the accuracy and efficiency of the quantitative analysis of non-coherent fault trees. This article demonstrates the value of the ternary decision diagram (TDD) method for the qualitative analysis of non-coherent fault trees. Such analysis can be used to provide information to a decision-making process for future actions of an autonomous system, and therefore it must be performed in real time. In these circumstances, fast processing and small storage requirements are very important. The TDD method provides a fast processing capability, and small storage is achieved when a single structure is used for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The efficiency of the TDD method is discussed and compared with the performance of the established methods for analysis of non-coherent fault trees.