Variable sorting based on fault tree structure adjustment for multi-valued decision diagrams

The dynamic fault tree does not have the ability of fault calculation when analyzing the reliability of the system, so it needs to be modeled and analyzed by means of multi-valued decision diagrams and so on. The dynamic fault tree is translated into a multi-valued decision diagram according to the ordering of variables of basic events which affects the size of the generated multi-valued decision diagram and the cost of traversal to get cut sequences. An adjustment method of the dynamic fault tree structure is proposed based on the importance degree of repeated events, dynamic gates and the locations of events of the dynamic fault tree. By taking the fact that the basic events at the same level are equally important into account, an improved dynamic variable ordering method and ordering generation algorithm for the multi-valued decision diagram are presented in this paper. The result analysis of an example shows that the improved dynamic variable ordering method can reduce the size of the multi-valued decision diagram and space and time complexity of the reliability calculation compared to the similar methods.