Uncertainty analysis of common cause failure in safety instrumented systems

W Mechri, C Simon and K Ben Othman

Journal of Risk and Reliability, 2011, vol. 225, issue 4, 450-460

Abstract: This paper analyses the problem of epistemic uncertainty in assessing the performance of safety instrumented systems (SIS) using fault trees. The imperfect knowledge concerns the common cause failure (CCF) involved in the SIS in low demand mode. The point-valued CCF factors are replaced by fuzzy numbers, allowing experts to express their uncertainty about the CCF values. This paper shows how these uncertainties propagate through the fault tree and how this induces an uncertainty to the values of the SIS failure probability on demand and to the safety integrity level of the SIS. For the sake of verification and comparison, and to show the exactness of the approach, a Monte Carlo sampling approach is proposed, where by a uniform or triangular second-order probability distribution of CCF factors is considered.

Keywords: common cause failure; safety instrumented systems; safety integrity level; fault trees; fuzzy numbers; uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:risrel:v:225:y:2011:i:4:p:450-460

DOI: 10.1177/1748007810395668

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