Risk evaluation in failure mode and effects analysis based on D numbers theory

Abstract

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a useful technology for identifying the potential faults or errors in system, and simultaneously preventing them from occurring. In FMEA, risk evaluation is a vital procedure. Many methods are proposed to address this issue but they have some deficiencies, such as the complex calculation and two adjacent evaluation ratings being considered to be mutually exclusive. Aiming at these problems, in this paper, A novel method to risk evaluation based on D numbers theory is proposed. In the proposed method, for one thing, the assessments of each failure mode are aggregated through D numbers theory. For another, the combination usage of risk priority number (RPN) and the risk coefficient newly defined not only achieve less computation complexity compared with other methods, but also overcome the shortcomings of classical RPN. Furthermore, a numerical example is illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.