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A NEW METHOD FOR ABBREVIATING THE

FAULT TREE GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

M. E. Stewart
0. 8. Fussell
R. J . trump
-NOTICE -
Aerojet Nuclear Company This tepon wai prepared as an account of work
sponsored by the United Stales Government. Neither
Idaho F a l l s , Idaho the United Stalrt not the United Staid Energy
Rncuch and Development AdminUtnliuft. nut any u(
their employees, not any of their canlraclori,
subcontractors, or their employees, make* any
warranty, exprt-U or implied, or assumes any legal
December 1974 liability or responsibility fot the accuracy, completeness
or usefulness of any information, apparatus, ptoduct or
pioceii disclosed, or represents that its us* would not
infringe privately owned lights.

Fault tree analysis is being widely used for reliability and safety
analysis of systems encountered in the nuclear industry and elsewhere . A
disadvantage of the fault tree method is the voluminous fault tree graphical
representation that conventionally results from analysis of a complex system
Previous methods for shortening the fault tree graphical representation
include (1) transfers within the fault tree, and (2) the use of the SAMPLE
(K out of I! logic) gate, the MATRIX gate, and the SUMMATION gate 3 . The
purpose of this presentation is to introduce TABULATION gates as a method
to abtreviate the fault tree graphical representation. These new gates
reduce the cost of analysis and generally increase the system behavior
visibility that is inherent in the fault tree technique.
OR TABULATION GATE. A number> H, of basic component failures (primary
events) displaying series failure logic is commonly encountered in practice.
The resulting fault tree representation is en OR gate with N primary events
as input. Figure I shows the standard fault tree representation and the OR
TABULATION gate equivalent.

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AND TABULATION GATE. The AND TABULATION gate is similar to the OR
TABULATION gate, but unlike the OR TABULATION gate it is used when parallel
failure logic is encountered. Because of the inherent nature of system
design the AND TABULATION gate is used far less frequently than the OR
TABULATION gate.
FUNCTION TABULATION GATE. The tedious repetition of N identical logic
structures, with the event descriptions different, input to the same logic
gate is replaced by the FUNCTION TABULATION gate. Figure 2 presents the
concept of the FUNCTION TABULATION gate with an example of the common logic
structure. This TABULATION gate should be used only when the corresponding
events in the repeated logic structure differ only slightly otherwise confu-
sion and loss of visibility can result. The need for FUNCTION TABULATION
gates arises commonly during analysis of nuclear reactor plant protection
systems.
TABULATION gates are being used at the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory with success for decreasing the time and cost reouired for fault
tree construction, shortening the fault tree graphical representation, and
increasing system behavior visibility. Also, preparing input for computer
aided analysis of fault trees is made easier by the TABULATION gates.

1. P. A. Crosetti and R. A. Bruce, "Commercial Application of Fault Tree


Analysis", Ninth Reliability and Maintainability Conference, Analysis
of Reliability and Maintainability, 1970, 9, p. 230.
2. Reactor Safety Study, United States Atomic Energy Commission, WASH-1400,
Draft (August 197377
3. "Fault Tree for Safety", The Boeing Company, D6-53604, November 1968.
r

Standard Fault Tree OR TABULATION Gate


Representation Representation

EVENT A EVENT A

OR

TE-1
PE-2
PE-3

PE-N

FIGURE 1: OR TABULATION Gate Equivalence


EVENT X

OR EVENT DESCRIPTIONS
B i PE-a PE-b ! PE-c
1 A I

/-—v 1
PE-a) B

Event Descriptions of the Corresponding


Faults Appear Here

FIGURE 2: Concept of the FUNCTION TABULATION Gate

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