Common-Cause Analysis Using SETS.

摘要

Common-cause analysis was developed at the Aerojet Nuclear Company for studying the behavior of a system that is affected by special conditions and secondary causes. Common-cause analysis is related to fault tree analysis. Common-cause candidates are minimal cut sets whose primary events are closely linked by a special condition or are susceptible to the same secondary cause. It is shown that common-cause candidates can be identified using the Set Equation Transformation System (SETS). A Boolean equation is used to establish the special conditions and secondary cause susceptibilities for each primary event in the fault tree. A transformation of variables (substituting equals for equals),executed on a minimal cut set equation,results in replacing each primary event by the right side of its special condition/secondary cause equation and leads to the identification of the common-cause candidates. (ERA citation 03:029000)