Accurate assessment of system reliability with limited or insufficient statistical data is difficult. At present, to assess the reliability of the transformers primarily depend on the statistics data, and the result of the assessment does not accurately reflect the reliability of a transformer. Fault tree is a powerful tool for depicting the logical relationships between the faults system. However, for a sophisticated reliability system, like power transformer, fault analysis is hard or infeasible because of the complexities of the equipment configuration and its faults. This paper presents a method which overcomes the drawbacks of traditional fault-tree analysis (FTA) by using FTA based on fault probability and equivalent calculation of each failure mode. Based on the further analysis of typical failure modes and influences of power transformer, the fault-tree of transformer is set up by using FTA techniques and the assessment method for the reliability of transformer is put forward, combined with the index of the importance and the method of improved analytic hierarchy process(IAHP). The assessment examples show the method can deduct the failure modes of transformer clearly, meanwhile, find out the weaknesses in time during the operation and get better assessment results. The method is helpful for the reliability analysis of a sophisticated system.
