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Fuzzy fault tree analysis: A review of concept and application

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Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
DOI 10.1007/s13198-013-0145-x
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Fuzzy fault tree analysis: a review of concept and application
Y. A. Mahmood • A. Ahmadi • A. K. Verma •
A. Srividya • U. Kumar
Received: 30 October 2012 / Revised: 17 January 2013 / Published online: 16 February 2013
 The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and
Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden 2013
Abstract Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a widely used
method for analyzing a system’s failure logic and calculating
overall reliability. However, application of conventional FTA
has some shortcomings, e.g. in handling the uncertainties,
allowing the use of linguistic variables, and integrating
human error in failure logic model. Hence, Fuzzy set theory
has been proposed to overcome the limitation of conven-
tional FTA. Fuzzy logic provides a framework whereby basic
notions such as similarity, uncertainty and preference can be
modeled effectively. The aim of this paper is to present a
review of the concept of fuzzy theory with fault tree analysis
and their applications since 1981, to reflect the current status
of Fuzzy fault tree analysis (FFTA) methodologies, their
strengths, weaknesses, and their applications. This paper
explains the fundamentals of fuzzy theory and describes
application of fuzzy importance for using FFTA. The con-
cept of the failure possibility and uncertainty analysis by
using FFTA is discussed, and concludes with discussion on
the application of FFTA in different fields. The review
reveals the effectiveness of the FFTA in comparison with
conventional FTA, when there is inadequate amount of
accurate reliability oriented information.
Keywords Fuzzy reliability  Fault tree analysis 
Fuzzy fault tree analysis
Y. A. Mahmood (&)  A. Ahmadi  U. Kumar
Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden
e-mail: yasser.ahmed@ltu.se
Y. A. Mahmood
University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq
A. K. Verma  A. Srividya
Stord/Haugesund University College, Haugesund, Norway
1 Introduction
Reliability analysis of a system requires a proper under-
standing of logical functional relationships among sub-
systems and their associated failure modes. Fault tree
analysis (FTA) is a widely used method for analyzing a
system’s failure logic and calculating overall reliability. It
was first conceived in 1961 by H. A. Watson of Bell
Telephone Laboratories in connection with US Air Force
contract, to study the Minuteman missile launch control
system (Lee et al. 1985). Since then, it is widely used for
system safety assessment, fault diagnosis and prognosis, as
well as reliability analysis of industrial systems, such as
nuclear reactor, aerospace, electric power, chemical,
mechanical, civil engineering, petrochemical industry,
pipelines, and electronics.
FTA is basically a cause-and-effect analysis and traces a
system failure ‘down’ to one or more failures at the lower
levels. The fundamental concept involved in the FTA is the
translation of a physical system into a structured logic
diagram, in which certain sequence of basic events (causes)
lead to one specified TOP event (i.e. system-level) of
interest (Gupta and Bhattacharya 2007). In fact, FTA is a
deductive procedure for determining combinations of both
component failures and human errors, which could result in
the occurrence of specified undesired events at the system-
level (Gupta and Bhattacharya 2007). The logic diagram is
constructed using event and logic symbols which derive the
failure logic for a system and represent it in a form which is
ideal for communication to managers, designers, and
operators. If failure rate and other necessary data are
available for the basic events, the fault tree analysis will
provide estimates of the frequency of occurrence of the
undesired events. However, application of conventional
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20
FTA has some shortcomings; vague, absence of accurate
data, and uncertainty.
In conventional FTA, the failure probabilities are con-
sidered as an exact value, i.e. single estimated value or crisp
value. However, it is difficult to estimate a precise failure
rate or probability of the components due to lack of insuf-
ficient data, or vague characteristic of the events. This is
crucial specifically in the preliminary design stages, when
the details of the components may have yet to be established,
thus an exact failure rate could not possibly be known.
In the absence of accurate data, the experiences of field
experts, e.g. designers, operators or personnel, provide an
effective database supporting the rough estimation of
required data (failure rate and probability). However, inad-
equate data makes it difficult to determine the probability in
an objective manner. Hence, human judgments by linguistic
variables become essential. Hence, they tend to apply natural
linguistic expression, such as ‘very low, low, high and fairly
high’, to describe the probability of events. As an example,
the diagnostic procedure is based on the observed analytical,
heuristic symptoms and the heuristic knowledge of the pro-
cess. Heuristic symptoms are the observations obtained
through inspection by operating personnel in various forms,
e.g. acoustic noise, oscillations or optical impressions like
colors or smoke. However, vague symptoms emerge fre-
quently which can usually be expressed only in the form of
qualitative measures or linguistic variables, such as ‘‘little,’’
‘‘medium’’ or ‘‘much’’. In fact, conventional mathematical
ways cannot handle natural linguistic expression efficiently
because of its vagueness (Ding and Yu 2005). In fact, the
crisp approach tends to have difficulty in conveying the
imprecision or vague nature in system modeling to represent
the failure rate.
In addition, in conventional FTA, the basic events con-
sidered are normally associated with hardware failure.
However, in a highly automated system, still people are the
key component in the system. According to Lee et al.
(Singer 1990), depending upon the degree of human
involvement in the system, the human component is
responsible for 20–90 % of the failures in many systems. As
a result of the unpredictability of human performance as
well as the vagueness of system phenomena, the basic
events in a man–machine system can be classified into two
categories, i.e. human-related subjective events and proba-
bilistic objective events. Thus, the integration of probabi-
listic estimation of hardware failures and subjective
evaluation of human performance is the major concern of
analyzing the hybrid system. In fact, the crisp approach used
in conventional FTA is unable to convey the imprecision or
vague nature of human performance in system modeling.
Moreover, the conventional FTA doesn’t allow alloca-
tion of a degree of uncertainty to the probability values in
the modeling of the basic event’s probability. Also, it does
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Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
not allow treating different aspects of uncertainty, proba-
bility and possibility at the same time. Even the most
sophisticated, precise, and well-constructed quantitative
model may give misleading results, if uncertainties are not
treated at some level.
Therefore, it is necessary to develop a new methodology
to capture the subjectivity and the imprecision of failure
data, to be used in the conventional FTA. Hence, using
fuzzy set theory has been proposed by many researchers,
such as Tanaka et al. (1983), Misra and Weber (1989) and
Kenarangui (1991) to overcome the limitation of conven-
tional FTA. Fuzzy logic provides a framework whereby
basic notions such as similarity, uncertainty and preference
can be modeled effectively. A ‘‘fuzzy set’’ represents a set
with ill-defined boundaries, and processes vague terms
with ‘‘grey boundaries’’. Fuzzy Logic is a branch of
mathematics that deals with fuzzy statements (linguistic
variables) and allows for partial membership in a set.
Fuzzy Logic provides a remarkably simple way to draw
definite conclusions from vague, ambiguous or imprecise
information (Zadeh 1978, 1988)
The classification and the number of papers published in
the last 30 years in the field according to Scopus biblio-
graphic database has been presented in Fig. 1. Tanaka et al.
(1983) proposed the Fuzzy fault tree analysis (FFTA) and
the possibility of failure instead of probability. They applied
fuzzy extension principle to calculate the probability of the
top event. Misra and Weber (1989) used the ‘‘max and min
operators’’ to evaluate the top event ‘‘possibility’’ in terms of
the ‘‘possibilities’’ of the basic events, and illustrated a
procedure to analyze an emergency core cooling system of a
nuclear reactor. Misra and Soman (1995) provided a simple
method for FFTA based on the a-cut method, also known as
resolution identity. This method was then extended to deal
with multi-state FTA. Sawyer (1994) used the a-cut method
to calculate the failure probability of the top event in fuzzy
FTA of mechanical systems. An event tree analysis tech-
nique, based on the use of verbal statements to characterize
the probability of events, has been presented by Kenarangui
(1991). Fuzzy method might be the only way when little
quantitative information is available regarding fluctuations
of the parameters, and the probabilities of basic events are
treated as fuzzy numbers (Ding and Yu 2005). Lin and
Wang (1997) combined fuzzy set theories with expert elic-
itation to the failure probability of basic events of a robot
drilling system, based on triangular fuzzy numbers. Liang
and Wang (1993) discussing about human performance and
how to evaluate the exact failure rates of components in
man–machine systems. Many other researchers (Geymayr
1995; Bowles and Pelaez 1995; Cai 1996; Sharma 1993;
Wang and Wu 2007; Wei et al. 2009; Dunyak and Wunsch
1998; Hatoyama 1979; Ferdous et al. 2009; Zonouz and
Miremadi 2006) contributed to support this approach and
Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
used the existing theory and methodology of the fuzzy
number based on FTA.
The need to possess appropriate theoretical methods for
handling above mentioned limitations with FTA is straight-
forward, and is of increasing importance with increasing
system complexity. Hence, a review of the concept of using
fuzzy theory with fault tree analysis and their applications, to
reflect the current status of FFTA methodologies, their
strengths, weaknesses, and their applications, has been pre-
sented in this paper.
The fundamentals of fuzzy theory are presented in Sect.
2. The fuzzy importance for using (FFTA) is described in
Sect. 3. The uncertainty analysis using FFTA is dealt with
in Sect. 4 and is defined. In Sect. 5 the concept of the
failure possibility is defined. The most relevant applica-
tions are presented in Sect. 6 and finally, the conclusions of
the present research are presented in Sect. 8.
2 Fundamentals of fuzzy theory
Zimmermann (1983) has explained the use of fuzzy meth-
odology in operational research and given the following
observations: Vague phenomenon, vague relations in the
modeling of problems, that is, the problems themselves may
be fuzzy in nature. Informational vagueness, that is, the
input data available to the problems may be fuzzy. Heuristic
algorithms, means although the problems may be accurate, it
can be too complex or expensive to get exact solutions to
them. In these circumstances heuristic or fuzzy algorithms
can help. In this section some relevant definitions and
principles of fuzzy mathematics are given to enable a better
understanding of the concepts on fuzzy theory.
2.1 Fuzzy number
Fuzzy number also called fuzzy probability (Tanaka et al.
1983), describes ‘vagueness’ on equal terms with ‘crisp-
ness’ (Weber 1994) such as ‘close to 5‘, ‘high reliability’
and ‘low failure rate’. A fuzzy set in probability space
Fig. 1 Year’s distributions of published papers of FFTA, when
putting ‘‘Fuzzy fault tree’’ in Scopus
21
represents a fuzzy number between zero and one, which
can be assigned to the probability of an event (Misra and
Soman 1995). There are many forms of fuzzy numbers
used e.g. triangular fuzzy number (TFN) and trapezoidal
fuzzy number (TZFN), which are commonly used in reli-
ability analysis. Many researchers have used the triangular
fuzzy number, although the pioneer worker in this field, i.e.
Tanaka et al. used a trapezoidal membership function.
Let x, a, b, c € R, and fa: R ? [0,1] represents the
membership function. Then, a triangular membership fuzzy
number A is clear in Eq. 1:

 ðx  aÞ=ðb  aÞ; . . .. . .. . .. . .:. . .a  x  b


fA ð xÞ ¼  ðc  xÞ=ðc  bÞ;. . .. . .. . .. . .::. . .a  x  b ð1Þ

 0; . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .otherwise
with a  b  c, this triangular fuzzy number can be denoted
by A˜ = (a,b,c). The parameter ‘b’ gives the maximal grade
of fA(x), ‘a’ and ‘c’ are the lower and upper bounds of the
available area for the evaluation data. Singer (1990) and
others (Kim 1996; Bian et al. 2009) used A˜ = (m,a,b) for
triangular to give the possible distribution of the basic
event probability. The value of ‘m = b’ but’a’ and’b’ the
left and right spreads ‘a = b - a’ and ‘b = c - b’ are
shown in Fig. 2a.
The second type of the fuzzy number is a trapezoidal
fuzzy number (Eq. 2) if its membership function fA:R
? [0,1] is:

 ðx  aÞ=ðb  aÞ; . . .. . .. . .. . .::. . .a  x  b

 1; . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .:. . .. . .b  x  c

f A ð xÞ ¼  ð2Þ
 ðc  xÞ=ðc  bÞ; . . .. . .. . .::. . .. . .c  x  d

 0; . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .otherwise
witha  b  c  dthe trapezoidal fuzzy number are shown
in Fig. 2b and can be denoted by A˜ = (a,b,c,d) the interval
[b,c] are the most likely values of fA(x), ‘a’ and ‘d’ are the
lower and upper bounds of the available area for the
evaluation data (Lin and Wang 1997). Some researchers
(Lee et al. 1985) treated probabilities of basic events as
trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. There are different forms of
fuzzy numbers but the form of triangular and trapezoidal is
commonly used in the field of FFTA.
Using FFTA methodology requires converting the crisp
value into a fuzzy number. Fuzzy numbers can be generated
using different method such as expert knowledge elicitation,
3rr expression, or a percentage of lower and upper limits
(Cai 1996). There are two basic forms of expert elicitation in
form of a linguistic language: linguistic variables and
interval values (Cai 1996). Hence, if there is no statistical
data to find the failure rate as a crisp value, the 3rr
expression mode is used. The principle of the 3rr expres-
sion method is by using three experts. Each expert will give
the estimate value for the probability value of the fault
123
22
Fig. 2 (a) Fuzzy Triangle
Number (FTN) A˜ = (a, b, c).
(a)
(b) Fuzzy Trapezoidal Number
(FTRN) A˜ = (a, b, c, d)
events. Each average value of the probability values of the
fault events is given by b, and the difference are the same and
shown as r. The guessed probability values belong to normal
distribution. According to the 3r law, the factual value is
located in the section of [b - 3r, b ? 3r]. And guess
‘aa = b = 3r’, each probability value of the fault event can
be expressed as A˜ = (b - 3r, b, b ? 3r). The second way is
to find the barycenter value of the subjection function b from
the statistical data as the probability of failure rate. Then the
lower and upper limit can be obtained as a range of uncer-
tainty of the basic events from the experts and technicians as
interval values (Wu et al. 2007). The other way is to use the
crisp probability lower and upper limit failure rate b, then one
can use lower and upper limits (as an example ±15 %)
spreads (Kumar 2012), and the fuzzy number can be
expressed as A˜ = (b - 0.15*b, b, b ? 0.15*b).
2.2 Linguistic variables and its advantages
Linguistic variables as its name suggests, is a variable whose
values are words or sentences in a natural or synthetic lan-
guage. For example, ‘‘probability-of-failure’’ might be a
linguistic variable whose values are from the term set: ‘‘very
low’’, ‘‘low’’, ‘‘medium’’, ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘very high’’. These
terms can be defined as a fuzzy set whose members are
probabilities of failures as a linguistic variable, as shown in
Fig. 3 (Bowles and Pelaez 1995). Each value of a linguistic
variable represents a possibility distribution. These possi-
bility distributions may be computed from the given possi-
bility distributions of the primary term (Zadeh 1988). But
the interval values may be expressed in terms of a pair of
single numbers [a,b], that is, 0 BB a B Bp B b B 1,
where p denotes the probist reliability (Cai 1996).
The main reason to treat probist reliability value by a
fuzzy number is the lack of observed data of system failure
behavior. Having inadequate data makes it difficult to
determine the probability in an objective manner. Hence,
human judgments by linguistic variables become essential.
The concept of linguistic variable is very useful, in
dealing with situations which are too complex or too ill-
defined to be reasonably described in conventional quan-
titative expressions. But conventional mathematical ways
cannot handle natural linguistic expression efficiently.
Therefore, fuzzy set theory was introduced by Zadeh to
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Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
(b)
Very Fairly Fairly Very
low Low low Medium high High high
1
0.5
0 0.5 1
Fig. 3 Fuzzy numbers represent linguistic value
cope with it by transforming these linguistic terms into
graphical or mathematical representations. In conventional
FTA, it is not possible to reflect an exact picture of system
safety as presented in the introduction. Hence, in order to
overcome this disadvantage, the combined expert elicita-
tion with fuzzy set theories was proposed to evaluate
probability of the events by linguistic variables (Ding and
Yu 2005; Lin and Wang 1997; Pan and Wang 2007). Fuzzy
methods and linguistic variables might be the only resort
when little and no quantitative information is available.
Linguistic variables can be used to present both human
error and hardware failure rates (Lin and Wang 1997).
Fuzzy set theory provides a useful tool for linguistic
expression in reliability analyses. The analyst can use lin-
guistic variables to assess the events in a natural way, and
the failures possibility of the events can be approximated,
by their membership functions. It is well suited for han-
dling ambiguous and imprecise information obtained in
system safety engineering (Lin and Wang 1997).
Weber (1994a, b), developed and applied an interval
method for fault tree analysis in 1981. He used symbolic
processing or symbolic math. This simplified analytical
approach used symbols at gates in place of probability
values. The symbols in the middle matched the semantic
descriptions (probability terms) like extremely remote,
remote, and frequent. This was the first step to use the
linguistic variables in FTA. Shu et al. (2006) collected
expert’s knowledge, to build the intuitionistic fuzzy num-
ber, in order to represent possibilities of failure basic
events. Pan and Wang (2007) and Ding and Yu (2005)
elicited the experts’ knowledge through several interviews
and questionnaires, to estimate the possibilities of failure.
Also Cheng et al. (2009) used expert’s knowledge on the
liquefied natural gas terminal emergency shutdown (ESD)
Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
by using the intuitionistic fuzzy number for representing
possibilities of failure. Dokas et al. (2009) described a
novel research investigation on how to combine expert
system (ES) technologies as a linguistic variables, together
with basic principles of the theory of fuzzy logic and a
widely used risk analysis fault tree analysis to develop an
EWS for landfill operations, and integrate possibility the-
ory and risk analysis into one operational fuzzy expert
system providing early warning services. Ren and Kong
(2011) proposed a new approach of fuzzy multi-state fault
tree analysis based on the fuzzy expert system. They
applied fuzzy theory to represent the degree of basic events
then according to the process of fuzzy expert system they
calculated the probability of the top event.
The process diagnosis history, in the form of mainte-
nance, repairs, former faults, lifetime and load measures,
constitutes a further source of heuristic information. Sta-
tistical data (e.g. MTBF, fault probabilities) achieved from
experience with the same or similar processes can be
added. Heuristic symptoms can be represented as linguistic
variables (e.g. small, medium, large) or as vague numbers
(e.g. around a certain value) (Isermann 1997).
2.3 Fuzzy logic operator
Supposing that the fuzzy triangular number PI and P2 can
be separately expressed by (a1, b1, c1) and (a2, b2, c2), the
algebraic algorithms about the fuzzy number P1 and P2 are
shown as follows:
1. ‘‘AND gate’’ fuzzy operators. In conventional FTA,
’’AND gate’’ operator is: PAND = G Pi in which
Pi(i = 1,2….n) represents the precise probability of
the event i is Pi. Fuzzy operator is:
" #
Y
n Y
n Y
n Y
n them (He et al. 2007). Also, the fuzzy importance also
PAND ¼ Pi ¼ ai ; bi ; ci ; ð3Þ
i1 i¼1 i¼1 i¼1
If the events are dependent, then the algebraic algorithm
is: PAND = min(P1, P2,……. Pn).
2. ‘‘OR gate’’ fuzzy operators, In conventional FTA, ’’OR
gate’’ operator is: POR = G (1-Pi) in which Pi
represents the precise probability of event i is Pi, then
’’OR gate’’ fuzzy operator can be denoted by:
Y n
POR ¼ 1  ð1  Pi Þ
"i1 # event can be imprecisely specified. This means that if the
Yn Y
n Y
n state of a basic event is expressed by a fuzzy event, it may
¼1 ð1  ai Þ; ð1  bi Þ; ð1  ci Þ; ð4Þ
i¼1 i¼1 i¼1
if the events are dependent, then the algorithm is POR =
max(P1, P2,……. Pn) (Mao et al. 2010).
Fujino and Hadipriono (1994) developed two gates for the
purpose of FFTA, i.e. fuzzy mean and fuzzy sum operation.
23
Fuzzy mean is a mean operation between AND and OR. The
fuzzy sum operation produces an accumulating effect of
input values. Kim et al. (1996) shows that fuzzy AND and OR
operators are used to evaluate the possibility of systems
failure, but each value of m from (m,,ab) is determined to
obtain the optimistic and pessimistic possibilities of the
system accident. These are extended with major and minor
TFNs to fuzzy FTA to get better results.
In fault tree analysis, although AND, OR gates have been
used as typical gates, but it is often difficult to model the
system structure with these two gates. The reason is that in
early design stage, exact knowledge on system failure
mechanism is not available in many cases (Pan and Yun
1997). Pan and Yun 1997 (1997) applied the fuzzy sets
theory to modeling the fuzzy system structure, and assumed
that the gates are modeled as a fuzzy relation because it is
often impossible to obtain the exact relationship between
components in the complex and large scaled system. While
some researchers (Yao and Zhang 2010; Song 2009) used a
new gate based on the T–S (Takagi and Sugeno) fuzzy model
to overcome these difficulties.
3 Importance measures
In conventional FTA, the concept of importance is used to
evaluate how far a basic event contributes to the top event.
Importance measure is determinable not only for the basic
events, but also for every higher-level event and contributor
as well. This provides a numerical significance of all the
fault tree elements and allows them to be prioritized
(NASA). Importance measure also is used to optimize the
system design and its reliability. It is used to improve system
reliability and cost because there is some tradeoff between
provides valuable information to improve fault diagnosis of
complicated system and provide a reasonable guidance for
maintenance (Mi et al. 2011). This can also be used to list the
examination table of fault diagnosis and to instruct the
operation and maintenance of the system (Peng et al. 2008).
The importance values are measured by the use of
probability information of both basic and top events (Gu-
imarees and Ebecken 1999; Furuta and Shiraishi 1984).
However, these probability-based definitions may be
insignificant for a case in which the occurrence of a basic
not be possible to identify the importance of each event on
the basis of only probability information.
Therefore, Furuta and Shiraishi (1984) proposed fuzzy
importance (FI) to account for the ambiguities involved in
the certification process of the occurrence of basic events
using max/min fuzzy operator and fuzzy integral. They
123
24
gave two evaluation examples, structural importance (SI)
are calculated with fuzzy importance (FI) for comparison
between two approaches. The results for Example-1 FI and
SI give the almost same order of importance, but for
Example-2, as shown in Table 1, they give the different
orders. For instance, the basic event No. 1 is evaluated by
FI as having the lowest importance. This difference can be
explained by the fact that the SI is determined only by the
position of the underlying event in FTA. While using the
fuzzy sets enables the calculation to account for the effect
of subjective uncertainties in the evaluation of the state of
basic events, and therefore yields a different order of
importance for event No. 1 (Furuta and Shiraishi 1984) and
this is showing the advantages of using the second
approach (Table 2).
Suresh et al. (1996) introduced a new approach to rank
the system components or basic events depending on, their
contribution to the top event failure probability and, their
uncertainty contribution to the uncertainty of the top event,
based on fuzzy set theory. They introduced two different
importance measures: fuzzy importance measure (FIM)
based on the Euclidean distance approach and fuzzy
uncertainty importance measure (FUIM), which are defines
as follow in equations 5 and 6:
 
FIMi ¼ ED Qqi¼1 ; Qqi¼0 ð5Þ
FUIMi ¼ ED½Q; Qi  ð6Þ
where Q = top event failure probability, Qi = top event
failure probability when error factor for component i is
unity. FUIM plays an important role in the reduction of
uncertainty, it is so important to identify the components
which have the maximum contribution of uncertainty to the
uncertainty of the top event. This helps in deciding the
components for which more information should be col-
lected so that the uncertainty in the calculated system
failure probability can be lowered. The importance order
and ranking by using FIM and FUIM are shown in the
Table 3 (Suresh et al. 1996).
It is seen in Table 3 that there is a similarity between
probability approach and fuzzy approach related to the
ranking based of importance measure. As it is shown, the
Table 1 Numerical results as a comparison between SI and FI in
Furuta and Shiraishi (1984)example
Event No. SI FI
1 0.44 0
2 0.06 0
3 0.44 0.42
4 0.31 0.19
5 0.31 0.09
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Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
fuzzy approach gives another advantage, by using FUIM
for ranking, which is based on propagated uncertainties.
Liang and Wang (1993) proposed another importance
measure known as fuzzy importance index (FII). Calcula-
tion of FII is based on the ranking method of triangular
fuzzy numbers with maximizing and minimizing sets. To
establish the rank and the degree of sensitivity of compo-
nents Chanda and Bhattacharjee (1998) proposed the reli-
ability improvement index (RII), and it is calculated by
preventing the failure of each component and cut set sep-
arately. According to this study, FIM, FIUM and FI are
widely used among other measures mentioned above.
4 Uncertainty analysis
Using fuzzy concept allows allocation of a degree of
uncertainty to each probability value, and treats different
aspects of uncertainty, probability and possibility at the
same time (Tanaka et al. 1983). Even the most sophisticated,
precise, and well-constructed quantitative model may give
misleading results if uncertainties are not treated at an
acceptable level. Uncertainty can range from modeling
uncertainty, to incomplete and unreliable information. So,
FFTA was designed to handle the uncertainty problem in
incertitude in conventional FTA (Weber 1994). The uncer-
tainties in the failure probability of system components or
basic events can be propagated to find the uncertainty in
the overall system failure probability. The conventional
approach is Monte Carlo simulation by assuming a proba-
bility distribution for the failure probability.
The probabilistic approach to uncertainty analysis basi-
cally depends upon the assumption of a probability distri-
bution of failure probability as explained earlier, which can
be obtained only when a sufficient amount of failure data is
available. To overcome some of the difficulties, the input
parameter is treated as a fuzzy number and the variability is
characterized by the membership function which can be
obtained based on available information or the expert’s
opinion. The membership function of each fuzzy set is
usually assumed to be a triangular or trapezoidal function
and is treated as a possibility distribution (Suresh et al. 1996;
Peng et al. 2008).
As we mentioned above in Sect. 3, FUIM was proposed
to identify those sources of uncertainties, which have the
greatest impacts on the uncertainty of the top event. Suresh
et al. have made a comparison between FUIM and using
Mote-Carlo method for the system that was used in (Ras-
mussen 1400). The corresponding error factors after 1200
trials of the Monte Carlo simulation. As it is evident are
shown in Table 3, the computation time used for the
probabilistic approach is very high, compared to the fuzzy
set approach. Both FIM and FUIM have been calculated
Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
Table 2 Fuzzy fault tree
Class
classification
FFTA introduction, Uncertainty,
possibility, and importance
Linguistic variables and expert
knowledge with FFTA
FFTA Diagnosis
FFTA application
Table 3 Failure probability and ranking for different components
Event no. Failure Error FIM FUIM
probability factor (rank) (rank)
1 1.7e–5 10 4.69 (1) 3.0e–4 (2)
2 1.0e–3 3 2.9e–2 (3) 4.5e–5 (4)
3 3.6e–4 3 2.9e–2 (3) 1.6e–5 (5)
4 1.0e–3 3 2.9e–2 (3) 4.5e–5 (4)
5 3.6e–4 3 2.9e–2 (3) 1.6e–5 (5)
6 6.1e–3 4 2.0e–2 (4) 2.8e–4 (3)
7 6.1e–3 4 2.0e–2 (4) 2.8e–4 (3)
8 9.7e–4 10 8.5e–2 (2) 5.5e–4 (1)
9 9.7e–4 10 8.5e–2 (2) 5.5e–4 (1)
based on Eqs. (3) and (4) for all basic events. Even though
Monte Carlo simulation gives slightly different important
measures for the events 2, 3, 4 and 5, the same rank was
given for all these events. In this approach, the fuzzy
importance measures are equal for the same rankings.
However, the ranking for FUIM is 1st for events 8 and 9,
2nd for event 1, 3rd for events 6, 7, 4th for events 2, 4, and
5th for events 3, 5, which is different from FIM 1st for
event 1, 2nd for events 8, 9, 3rd for events 2, 3, 4, 5 and
4thfor event events 6, 7, as expected. FIM can be used to
find out the critical component which can be used for
design modifications of the system. The results of FUIM
25
Papers
Singer(1990), Tanaka et al. (1983), Misra and Weber (1989),
Misra and Soman (1995), Sawyer (1994), Lin and Wang (1997),
Liang and Wang (1993), Cai (1996), Zonouz and Miremadi
(2006), Pan and Yun (1997), Yang et al. (1995), Page and Perry
(1994), Pan and Wang (2007), Kim (1996), Deshpande and
Khanna (1995), Chanda and Bhattacharjee (1998), Zhang et al.
(2008), Weber (1994a), Bian et al. (2009), Suresh et al. (1996),
Guimarees and Ebecken (1999), Furuta and Shiraishi (1984),
Fujino and Hadipriono (1994), and Mohan et al. (2003)
Ding and Yu (2005), Lin and Wang (1997), Cai (1996), Kim
(1996), Fujino (1994), Cheng et al. (2009), Dokas et al. (2009),
Ulieru (2199), Sui (2011), Renjith et al. (2010), and La (2008)
Page and Perry (1994), Dokas et al. (2009), Sui (2011), Wu et al.
(2007), Peng et al. (2008), Yuliang and Tiejun (2010), Yao et al.
(2010), Ulieru (1994), Gmytrasiewicz et al. (1990), Lou et al.
(2010), Chang and Chang (2003), Hurdle et al. (2212), Chen
(2011), Xie (2010), Yao (2010), Khan 2000
Ding and Yu (2005), Misra and Soman (1995), Sawyer (1994), Lin
and Wang (1997), Cai (1996), Page and Perry (1994), Kim
(1996), Chanda and Bhattacharjee (1998), Zhang et al. (2008),
Cheng et al. (2009), Dokas et al. (2009), lieru (2199), Peng et al.
(2008), Yuliang and Tiejun (2010), Yao et al. (2010), Ulieru
(1994), Lou et al. (2010), Chen (2011), Batzias and Batzias
(2003), Batzias and Siontorou (2004), Xiao-lin et al. (2010), Shu
et al. (2006), Kumar et al. (2008), Wu et al. (2007), Hu and Ge
(2010), Rong and Xin (2010), Szabó et al. (2010), and
Zimmerman (1983)
can be utilized to provide insight on the design of data and
information gathering strategies that focus on the reduction
of the total uncertainty (Suresh et al. 1996).
Ferdous et al. (2009) also introduce a comparison of the
conventional probability and fuzzy approaches for measur-
ing propagated error on the top-event. They have used the
conventional probability approach, and Monte Carlo simu-
lation for uncertainty analysis. Different levels of error (e.g.
5, 10, 15 and 20 %) are considered in the basic event data of
FTA. Detailed comparison of uncertainty propagation for
both conventional probability and fuzzy approaches are
presented in Table 4. It also illustrates how much error is
propagated cumulatively, in the calculation of top-event
probability, if the basic event data are not accurately mea-
sured (Ferdous et al. 2009).
According to Table 4, it is obvious that the fuzzy based
approach gives a better result compared to the normal
probability approach, which makes it more realistic and
robust, to handle the vagueness and imprecision of the
basic event, in FTA.
Zonouz and Miremadi (2006) used another methodology
like fuzzy-Monte Carlo simulation (FMCS) approach to
handle the uncertainty. The FMCS approach has two main
advantages in comparison to the traditional Monte Carlo
Simulation. It considers the cognitive uncertainty in addi-
tion to the noncognitive vagueness. Also it has the capa-
bility to model the situation in which components fail at a
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26 Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32

Table 4 Error robustness of fuzzy approach and normal probability probability of failure. The failure possibility defined by
approach (Ferdous et al. 2009) Onisawa (1988) can effectively represent the variation of
Considered Approach Top-event Deviation in human performance, the vagueness of system phenomena,
error in data probability percentage a (%) and the degree of stability of system components. In this
sense, Failure possibility is a nonprobability subjective
No error (%) Exact probability 2.8e–4 –
approach b measure of reliability, using natural language expressions.
Fuzzy Approach – – The failure possibility can be defined by a fuzzy number
5 Conventional 2.97e–4 1 on interval [0,1], with any shape of membership function.
probability The triangular fuzzy numbers which is defined by an
approach interval i.e. [0,1] are used to denote the failure possibilities.
Fuzzy Approach 2.95e–4 2 The reason of using the triangular fuzzy numbers is because
10 Conventional 3.32e–4 13.3 it is intuitively easy for the decision-makers to perform
probability evaluation. It can convey the most possible failure rate of
approach
the system, and also reflect the dispersion of the evaluation
Fuzzy Approach 2.97e–4 3
data. It is very useful in conveying the variation of human
15 Conventional 3.48e–4 20.5
performance, the vagueness of system phenomena as well
probability
approach as the stability of machine components in man–machine
Fuzzy Approach 2.98e–4 13.5 systems (Liang and Wang 1993; Cai 1996; El-Iraki and
20 Conventional 4.63e–4 60 Odoom 1998; Huang et al. 2004).
probability Possibility theory becomes a specially powerful tool for
approach working with uncertainty when it is coupled with the
Fuzzy Approach 3.03e–4 5 concept of a linguistic variable (Bowles and Pelaez 1995;
a
Deviation = [TE probability (defined approach) - TE probability Zadeh 1973). Liang and Wang (1993) used failure possi-
(exact approach)]/[TE probability (exact approach)] bility defined by a triangular fuzzy number on the interval
b
Considering all basic event data are accurately measured [0,1] to characterize the possible deviation of the basic
events. Singer (1990) analyzed fuzzy reliability by using
L–R type (the Left and Right spreads) fuzzy numbers. He
single point of time as well as those which may fail considered the relative frequencies of the basic events as
gradually. fuzzy numbers and used possibility instead of probability
measures. He has shown the use of n-array possibilistic
AND, OR, and NEGATIVE operators to construct possible
5 Possibility fault tree allowing a straightforward evaluation for the
possibility distributions of the main events.
Possibility and probabilities are both defined on the interval In order to replace probabilistic considerations in the
[0, 1] and both provide a measure of uncertainty, but they FTA by the possibilistic ones and to reduce the difficulty
are quite different (Bowles and Pelaez 1995). Zadeh (1978) arising from the inexact and insufficient information of the
introduced the notion of a possibility in describing vaguely distribution functions. Kim (1996) proposed two cases of
defined events, failure and reliability problems. possibility distribution, i.e. a pessimistic possibility of
Using possibility instead of probability was proposed to system failure with major TFN and, an optimistic one with
characterize the failure occurrence of system events. minor TFN. The value of m from (m, a, b) is determined to
Possibility theory in the framework of fuzzy sets was obtain the optimistic and pessimistic possibilities of the
further developed by other researchers found its applica- system accident. We can extend major and minor TFNs to
tions in the area of reliability. Cai (1996a, b) and Cremona fuzzy FTA for better results.
and Gao (1997), have shown that the consideration of Lin and Wang (1997) and Ding and Yu (2005) used
fuzzy or possibilistic methodology in reliability and safety fuzzy possibility score (FPS) to reduce the difficulty arising
analysis is natural, and stems from the lack of observed from inexact and insufficient information of the distribu-
data regarding system failure in some cases; or the tion functions of basic event. In their approach, they used
inherent vagueness of human judgment in others (He et al. FPS to represent the failure occurrence of the fuzzy events.
2007). To integrate the hardware failure rate and the fuzzy pos-
The possibility of failure was first used as a substitute sibility score of human error, a transformation function is
for the probability of failure by Tanaka et al. (1983). In used to convert fuzzy possibility score into fuzzy failure
their definition, the possibility of failure includes the rate.

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Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
6 Diagnosis as application of FFTA
System fault diagnosis is the process of identifying the
cause of a malfunction by observing its effect at various
test points (Hurdle et al. 2212; GazdikI 1985). The task of
fault diagnosis consists of the determination of the type of
fault with as many details as possible, such as the fault size,
location and time of detection. The diagnostic procedure is
based on the observed analytical and heuristic symptoms
and the heuristic knowledge of the process.
There are three inputs to the knowledge-based fault-
inferencing mechanism to represent symptoms in fault
diagnosis: Analytical symptoms, Heuristic symptoms, and
process history and fault statistics. The latter depends on
the general status, based on the history (past life) of the
process, that’s like FTA methodology its depending to the
failure rate in the past life. The information on the process
history in general is vague, and their facts have to be taken
as heuristic symptoms (Isermann 1997).
Heuristic symptoms share the observations of the oper-
ating personnel in the form of acoustic noise, oscillations
or optical impressions like colors or smoke, obtained by
inspection. These empirical facts can usually only be rep-
resented in form of qualitative measures, e.g. as linguistic
expressions like ‘‘little’’, ‘‘medium’’ or ‘‘much’’, and the
FFTA consider one of methods of fault diagnosis methods
can represent this qualitative measures (Zhu and Yu 2002).
The process of fault tree construction is a process of
searching the relationship between faults and its fault rea-
sons. The process of describing the logical relationship
between fault combination of actual system and transmis-
sion abstractly applying graphic symbol of the fault tree
(incident symbols and logic symbols). The fault is designed
by deductive method, which manual analyze fault reasons
and process, to find all possible reasons of each incidents
from top event to bottom event which have related in step
by step (Hongxia et al. 2008).
Therefore, this is a good advantage in diagnosis in order
to connect all the component with symptoms as shown in
Fig. 4. Fuzzy fault diagnosis is an approach that is based on
fuzzy mathematics using fuzzy relation matrix and the
principle of maximal membership and threshold, according
to the relationship between fault reasons and symptoms to
diagnose the reasons on the base of considering all symp-
toms as shown in Fig. 4 (Ding and Yu 2005; Yao et al.
2010; Hurdle et al. 2212; Hongxia et al. 2008; Isermann
2006; Wang et al. 2009).
Gmytrasiewicz et al. (1990) proposed a two-step
approach for fuzzy failure diagnostics. The first step intro-
duces a causality matrix relating the symptoms to failure
modes, which are constructed as combinations of basic
events of the tree. The fuzzy matrix equation is then solved
for the failure vector. A fuzzy matrix relation connecting the
27
failure vector to the basic events is finally solved in the
second step to determine estimates of the system failures in
terms of the basic events. The fault trees were used to con-
struct fuzzy relation equations that relate the failure modes to
the basic events. Ulieru (1994) developed a dynamic
approach for fuzzy fault trees processing. Based on similarity
evaluation it determines. The possibilistic approach that
allows the on-line processing of the dynamic fuzzy infor-
mation gathered from the on-line detected dynamic and
subjective symptoms. Shu et al. (2006) From integrating
expert’s knowledge and experience in terms of providing the
possibilities of failure of bottom events, to calculate fault
interval of system components. In order to find the most
critical system component for the managerial decision-
making based on intuitionistic fuzzy fault-tree analysis to
implement FTA on PCBA fault diagnosis.
7 Industrial application
FFTA is used in system safety assessment and reliability
analysis especially for complex and large scaled system,
such as nuclear reactor, aerospace, electronics, electric
power, chemical, mechanical, civil engineering, petro-
chemical industry, pipelines, and so on, as presented in
Table 5. Several papers have been presented that expound
the virtues of fault-tree analysis and its applications.
Numerous researchers use this benefit of FFTA to
employ linguistic expression to estimate the probability of
the occurrence of the event and assess the failure of the
system (Ding and Yu 2005; Pan and Wang 2007). Mohan
et al. (2003) and Pan and Wang (2007) used the FFTA to
assess the failure rate of channel and bridge construction.
Others used the linguistic variables to overcome the diffi-
culties in FTA for the machine-man basic events. Human
performance is affected by many Performance Shaping
Factors, e.g. stress level, task knowledge and experience,
and congnitionability. In fact, the unpredictability of
human performance as well as the vagueness of system
phenomena lead to use the fuzzy approach to make it easy
(Zadeh 1988).
Some researchers (Mokhtari 2011; Ferdous 2011; Fer-
dous 2011) used FFTA and FETA and integrated them by
using a bow-tie framework to analyze the risk assessment.
Also FFTA can be used as early warning and emergency
response where system parameters can be continuously
monitored and it can evaluate in real time, Dokas et al.
(2009) and Szabo (2011) used this task in context of which
in turn relies on the ability to accurately risk estimation and
management. On the other hand, in maintenance activities
Kumar et al. (2008) used FFTA as analytical tool for
identifying the predominant failure modes to decide pre-
dictive maintenance tasks on process equipment’s.
123
28
Fig. 4 Fault–symptom relationship (Wang et al. 2009)
Table 5 Applications of FFTA
System analyzed by fault tree
analysis
Traditional electrical system
Traditional mechanical
system
Ammonia storage tank
Robot motion
Nitration unit
Irrigation canal systems
Electroplating system
Biosensor
Civil construction
engineering
The fire water supply system
PCBA process
Landfill operations
Gas transmission pipelines
Water tank system
Communication control
system
Emergency shutdown system
GIS
LPG tanks
Cooler process plant
Ports and offshore terminals
risk analysis
Biomonitoring surveys
Hoisting system
Automatic gun, weapon
systems
Nuclear power plant
Computer security system
Risk analysis
Construction projects delay
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Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
References
Misra and Soman (1995), Bowles and Pelaez (1995), Chanda and
Bhattacharjee (1998), Wu et al. (2007), Xiao-lin et al. (2010), Kumar
et al. (2008), Wu et al. (2007), Szabó et al. (2010), Hong (2008), Szabo
et al. (2011), and Chang (2009)
Sawyer (1994), Yuliang and Tiejun (2010), Yao et al. (2010), Yao (2010),
Jinhua et al. (2011), Yao (2011), Li (2011), and Zhang (2010)
Deshpande and Khanna (1995) and Deshpande (2011)
Lin and Wang (1997)
Khan (2000)
Mohan et al. (2003)
Batzias and Batzias (2003)
Batzias and Siontorou (2004) and Siontorou (2008)
Pan and Wang (2007), Zhao et al. (2010)
Mao (2010)
Shu et al. (2006)
Dokas et al. (2009)
Ding and Yu (2005)
Hurdle et al. (2212)
Peng et al. (2008)
Cheng et al. (2009)
Hu and Ge (2010)
Rong and Xin (2010)
Yang et al. (1995)
Mokhtari (2011)
Siontorou (2011)
Yao and Zhang (2010)
Chang (2006)
Guimarees and Ebecken (1999), Gmytrasiewicz et al. (1990), Purba (2010),
and Guimarães and Lapa (2008)
Kumar (2012)
Szabo et al. (2011), Wang (2011), Hu (2413), Wang (2011), Abdelgawad
(2011), Mentes (2011), Batzias (2010), Celik (2010), and Balog and Berta
(2001)
Al Humaidi (2010)
Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (Jan-Mar 2013) 4(1):19–32
8 Conclusions
FTA is widely used to assess the operational performance,
reliability prediction, lifetime, and system safety of various
complex systems involved in, a nuclear reactor, aerospace,
the petrochemical industry, oil and gas transmission, and
other complex electrical mechanical systems.
The first issue as a comparison between FFTA and
conventional FTA is the dominance property of FFTA.
Conventional FTA uses the crisp value probabilistic con-
siderations, while linguistic variables and possibility is
considered in FFTA. Conventional FTA does not give
information concerning the tolerances and variation of the
probability values, and the dependencies of the events,
while FFTA usually uses a triangular or trapezoidal pos-
sibility, and takes into account the uncertainty in calcula-
tions. In conventional FTA, the importance of the basic
event is measured based on the direct contribution to the
top event, while in FFTA, the contribution of uncertainties
also is considered.
Further in FTA, it might be necessary to consider pos-
sible failure of components even if they have never failed
before and there is no data available associated with the
possible failure. The use of FFTA makes it possible to
consider any possible failure events, using expert elicita-
tion and possibility approach. FFTA has been found
capable to handle the linguistic variables and the impre-
cision of the uncertainties associated with the modeling of
failures and their dependency.
In addition, FTA is not suitable where available data are
insufficient for statistical inferences, or the data show a
large variation. Fuzzy methodology might be the only
resort when little quantitative information is available
regarding fluctuations in the parameters.
In fact, the experiences of field experts provide an
effective database supporting the estimation of required
data, although they have to face the numerous conflicting
evaluations. Actually, the management of the large number
of tangible and intangible attributes that must be taken into
account represents the main complexity of the problem.
Application of fuzzy set theory makes it possible to elicit
the expert judgment which is often given in natural lan-
guage as linguistic variables.
Building a fuzzy relation matrix through FFTA makes it
possible to identify the relationship between failure modes,
fuzzy symptoms and basic events, for diagnosis purposes. It
takes into account the uncertainties and fuzziness of the
symptoms and facilitates the effective use of information
represented by FFTA. Combining fuzzy theory with FTA
makes it possible to diagnose faults efficiently and can be
easily designed with an aim of online prevention of the fault.
The review reveals the effectiveness of the FFTA in
comparison with conventional FTA, when there is inadequate
29
amount of accurate reliability oriented information. The pro-
posed method improves the analysis of the system and the
judgment ability of fault models, and greatly increases the
correction of fault component decision.
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