Applications of fault tree analysis to maintenance interval extension and vulnerability assessment

Fault tree analysis is a technique used to quantify the failure rates associated with potentially hazardous systems. The effects and interactions of various process subsystems are explicitly analyzed in a fault tree. information on how process subsystems interact is extremely useful when decisions are made concerning lengths of maintenance intervals and assessments of vulnerability. This paper shows bow that information can be extracted from an existing fault tree and used for decision making. (c) 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process.