A Mathematical Method to Optimize Fault Tree Displays

Abstract

Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) has undergone significant development since its inception in the early 1960s. It has been instrumental in modeling safety and reliability problems in which failure simply is not an option. Aerospace and nuclear industries, several universities, government agencies and software developers have played a large role in the development of FTA. As a result, practical and widely applicable mathematical tools have been established using reasonably common terminology and computer applications. This paper focuses on the fault tree display itself, and on improvements that add significant benefits to it.