Boosting fault tree analysis by formal methods

Abstract

Fault trees are a key technique in safety and reliability engineering. Their application includes aerospace, nuclear power, car, and process engineering industries. Various fault tree extensions exist that increase expressiveness while yielding succinct models. Their analysis is a main bottleneck: techniques do not scale and require manual effort. Formal methods have an enormous potential to solve these issues. We discuss a mixture of formal method techniques resulting in a fully automated and scalable approach to analyze Dugan’s dynamic fault trees.