Determination of minimal cut sets of a complex fault tree

Minimum cut sets are commonly obtained for evaluation of large fault trees. The number of minimum cut sets usually increases with the size of trees and this leads to al complexity in the evaluation of a fault tree. Modules of fault trees could be developed to reduce the size of trees and simplify the quantitative analysis. This paper will discuss procedures for developing modules, and methods for finding the minimum cut sets of a fault tree. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.