A new decomposition algorithm for complex voting gates processing in qualitative fault tree analysis

作者：Wang Jin; Chen Shanqi; Wang Fang; Hu Liqin^*

来源：Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers - Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability , 2015, 229(6): 568-575.

DOI：10.1177/1748006X15594488

• Decomposition algorithm
• voting gates
• fault tree analysis
• minimal cut sets
• qualitative analysis

Fault tree analysis technique is one of the main methods of reliability analysis. In a fault tree, voting gate, namely k out of n (k/n) gate, is one of the standard Boolean logic constructs which can represent AND, OR and NOT gates. It is traditionally expanded into a combination of AND and OR gates, but such expansion results in combinatorial explosion problem in determining minimal cut sets of the fault tree for even a not very big n, especially when the voting gate inputs are complex sub-trees rather than basic events. In this article, a new decomposition algorithm based on expanded combination formula which can decompose the voting gates more quickly while the space and time complexity is lower than the traditional expansion was proposed. The results of experiments on fault trees with voting gates showed that this algorithm was more efficient than the traditional expansion method and the recursive decomposition method.

• 出版日期2015-12
• 单位中国科学技术大学