Fault-tree analysis: a knowledge-engineering approach

This paper deals with the application of knowledge engineering and a methodology for the assessment and measurement of reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety of industrial systems using fault-tree representation. Object oriented structures, production rules representing the expert's heuristics, algorithms, and database structures are the basic elements of the system. The blackboard architecture of the system supports qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the fault tree. A fuzzy set approach analyzes problems with few failure data or much fuzziness or imprecision. Fault-tree analysis is a knowledge acquisition structure that has been extensively explored by knowledge engineers. Reliability engineers can apply the techniques developed by this area of computer science to: (1) improve the data acquisition process; (2) explore the benefits of object oriented expert systems for reliability applications; (3) integrate the several sources of knowledge into a unique system; (4) explore the approximate reasoning to handle uncertainty; and (5) develop hybrid solution strategies combining expert heuristics, conventional procedures, and available failure data