Plant Hazard Analysis and Safety Instrumentation Systems

3.0. Fault Tree Analysis

FTA was originally developed in 1962 at Bell Laboratories, under a U.S. Air Force Ballistics Systems Division contract to evaluate the Minuteman I Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Launch Control System [2]. This method is widely used in the area of safety engineering, to quantitatively determine the probability of safety in an undesired or accidental event referred to as a top event. With reference to Fig. V/3.0-1A, at the beginning of the chapter the importance of boundaries is discussed. In the figure, there is some gap between the external boundary and actual problem part (actual problem boundary). This is the interface part, and is quite important in any risk analysis. In the case of FTA, it is also important ...