Cascading Failure Analysis Based Early Design for a Complex Engineering System

In the life-cycle of an industry, reliability of engineering systems as they age is essential, in order to avoid system failure. Therefore, risk inspection is required to detect any failure / or defect that may occur in an engineering system. System developers are expected to yield a safety case that documents the reasons why a system is safe to be operated after identifying the hazards and risks. The failure of critical components often makes the headlines, and may have catastrophic consequences to human health, the environment or the asset. Such a requirement will be addressed in this paper. A new approach will be introduced to identify the critical component(s) in a dynamic visionary, and this method is proposed through a series-parallel network. Empirical approaches are presented, which are Reliability Importance, Electrical Network Analogy, and Hybrid Method of Fault Tree Analysis and Electrical Network Analogy (FTA/ENA). Reliability Importance will define the least reliable entity in an engineering system. Electrical Network Analogy detects the defected component(s) in an engineering system by indicating the level of current flow in resistors of the electrical network, which is simulated in OrCAD PSpice software program. Finally, the hybrid method (FTA/ENA) is discussed to evaluate the cascading consequences of critical components failure. The Fault Tree Analysis establishes various combinations that cause undesired events, which result either from human error and/or entity fail in an engineering system. On the other hand, the Electrical Network Analogy indicates the defected entities, as well as the critical failure path in an engineering system.