Reliability analysis of an autonomous underwater vehicle using fault tree

摘要

Reliability is a very important specification for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The higher reliability can bring the shorter stop-working time and the lower maintenance cost. For a new AUV, reliability needs to be considered in advance during system design stage. This paper proposes a fault tree method for reliability analysis of the 4500m AUV. Firstly a fault tree model and its qualitative analysis are presented to determine the AUV's bottlenecks. Then the reliability is demonstrated by the Monte Carlo simulation. Finally some experiences are discussed to improve the AUV's reliability.