Fault tree analysis

Electrical engineering

Physics

Ranking (information retrieval)

Mathematics

Multiple-criteria decision analysis

Data mining

Mathematical optimization

Machine learning

Criticality

Engineering

Heuristic

Artificial intelligence

Power (physics)

Component (thermodynamics)

Nuclear physics

Programming language

Reliability engineering

Influence diagram

Turbine

Binary decision diagram

Computer science

Quantum mechanics

Failure mode and effects analysis

Wind power

Theoretical computer science

Expression (computer science)

Failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis

Reliability (semiconductor)

Binary number

Mechanical engineering

Decision tree

Arithmetic

Thermodynamics

Information

New wind turbines are becoming more complex and reliability analysis of them rising in complexity. The systems are composed of many components. Fault tree is used as an useful tool to analyze these interrelations and provide a scheme of the wind turbine, to get a quick overview of the behavior of the system under certain conditions of the components. However, it is complicated and in some cases not possible, to identify the conditions that would generate a wind turbine failure. A quantitative and qualitative reliability analysis of the wind turbine is proposed in this study. Binary decision diagrams are employed as a suitable and operational method to facilitate this analysis and to get an analytical expression by the Boolean functions. The size of the binary decision diagram, i.e., the computational cost for solving the problem, has an important dependence on the order of the components or events considered. Different heuristic ranking methods are used to find an optimal order or one closed, and to validate the results: AND, level, top-down-left-right, deep-first search and breadth-first-search. Birnbaum and criticality importance measures are proposed to evaluate the relevance of each component. This analysis leads to classify the events according to their importance with respect to the probability of the top event. This analysis provides the basis for making medium and long-term maintenance strategies.

Reliability Dynamic Analysis by Fault Trees and Binary Decision Diagrams