KAUSAL: A New Methodological Approach for Model Based Analysis of Complex Failure Chains by Example of an Electromobility Concept

摘要

The increasing complexity of modern products is the cause of many problems concerning safety and technical reliability. Especially in the field of public transport, the consequences of failures are disastrous. In order to prevent this matter, many techniques have been developed for failure analysis such as FMEA (Failure Mode Effects Analysis) or RBD (reliability block diagram). However, those techniques cannot handle the complexity in a mechatronic system, because they are still fragmentary. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an approach, which be able to analyze interactions between all system elements and their failures. For this purpose, the fundamental principles from Systems Engineering are an optimum solution to understand the complexity of a system in order to prevent potential failure by using a model based failure analysis. But, how can failure chains be represented and analyzed transparently in the system model? Are there any possibilities to combine determined failure chains with established methods of different disciplines for a holistic analysis? These crucial questions form the major part of this article and will be demonstrated by example of an electromobility concept.