THE PROPAGATION OF FAULTS IN PROCESS PLANTS .6. OVERVIEW OF, AND MODELING FOR, FAULT TREE SYNTHESIS

An interactive, computer-based facility has been developed for the investigation of fault propagation in process plants, including fault tree synthesis, which is embodied in the FAULTFINDER code. The general development and status of the work and the modelling are described in this paper and work on dividers and headers, on control systems, on trip systems and on fault tree synthesis in further companion papers. The paper gives a summary of the approach used in the decomposition of the system and in the generation of the unit models which consist of mini-fault trees. The features of modelling particularly considered are the modelling of flow and pressure, the modelling of pipe and vessel ports, the generation of models for vessels and the use of vessel templates, systematic approaches to modelling of generic items such as reactors, heat exchangers, separation equipment and pressure raisers, and the specification of a model library.