Failure root causes analysis of complex systems—Dynamic Fault Tree approach
Abstract
In this paper we propose a methodology for the identification of the root causes of the failures of a complex dynamic system based on its Dynamic Fault Tree (DFT) and the component’s execution traces leading to the system’s malfunction. The proposed method is decomposed as follows: each basic event in the DFT is associated to its execution trace and a post-order depth-first traversal of the DFT is applied. Computing the failure-time and the failure root causes of each node of the DFT is done during the traversal of the DFT. As result, the failure root causes of the dynamic complex system is obtained in the top event of the DFT. The methodology is illustrated on an academic example.