Minimal cut sequence generation for state/event fault trees

Abstract

State/Event Fault Trees (SEFTs) have been developed to conduct safety modeling and assessment for safety critical systems. The purpose of minimal cut sequence analyses performed on this kind of model consists in computing the minimal scenarios that lead to system failures. As SEFTs do not provide a well-defined semantics that is essential for minimal cut sequence analysis, this paper proposes a minimal cut sequence analysis method for SEFTs based on interface automata. Firstly, in order to describe triggers and guards of SEFTs simultaneously, guarded interface automaton is proposed by adding guards on the transitions of interface automaton. Secondly, the precise semantics of SEFTs is given based on the guarded interface automata. After that, a minimal cut sequence analysis method is presented based on formal semantic model of SEFTs. Finally, the method in this paper is illustrated by modeling and analyzing the SEFT of a fire protection system. Our method is a new solution for minimal cut sequence analysis of SEFTs.