Boolean Family Exercises

Abstract

This chapter proposes sixteen exercises presented in a progressive manner and related to the methods belonging to the Boolean family (reliability block diagrams and fault trees). They are based on the analysis of an overpressure protection system which is used throughout the chapter. They encompass:

• RBD and FT building;

• minimal cut and tie sets identification and analysis;

• qualitative, semi-quantitative and quantitative analyses;

• binary decision diagram building and disjoint path identification and analysis;

• unavailability, failure frequency and unreliability calculations;

• importance factor calculations;

• uncertainty propagation.

Ten exercises can be achieved by hand and six of them need the use of an FT computing software. They have been dimensioned to be achievable by using the free demo version of the GRIF-workshop software package.