Reliability and barrier assessment of series–parallel systems subject to cascading failures

Abstract

Cascading failures can occur in many technical systems where the components are organized as in series–parallel structures. The failures in these systems may propagate from one component to the other, not only within the same parallel sub-structure but also between different sub-structures. This article presents a recursive aggregation method based on the extended models of reliability block diagram, for analyzing the impacts of cascading failures on the reliability of series–parallel systems. Based on the reliability analysis, the effects of safety barriers on preventing cascading failures are studied, and the importance of safety barriers at different locations is evaluated. One simple example of three components and one practical case from an oil production system are presented. The findings in these case studies illustrate how system designers and safety managers can identify the effective and reasonable ways of installing safety barriers by using the proposed approaches, for the mitigation of cascading failures in series–parallel technical systems.

Analysis and Prevention and Control System of Domino Accident Risk Data in Chemical Parks Based on Topological Neural Network

“…Artificial neural networks are usually optimized by a mathematical statistic-based type of learning method, so they are also a practical application of mathematical statistic methods, which allow us to obtain a large number of local structured spaces that can be expressed as functions through standard mathematical methods of statistics. A method based on a network of separated nodes is proposed to systematically analyze and study the vulnerability of each chemical plant in the chemical park and to design the intelligent protection of the chemical park based on the vulnerability of the chemical plant to improve the recovery capability and speed after the occurrence of abnormalities in the chemical park [ 9 ].…”

Analysis of cascading probabilistic common cause failures

“…22,23 Rich research efforts have been expended in modeling the cascading failure behavior and studying the complex propagation mechanism [24][25][26] as well as in analyzing the robustness, reliability, vulnerability, and resilience of systems subject to cascading failures. [27][28][29][30][31][32][33] In this work we consider Cascading PCCFs (CPCCFs), where a CC may cause multiple system components to fail simultaneously with different probabilities and have cascading effects (i.e., some components affected by the CC may fail successively or in a domino chain manner). CPCCFs abound in real-world systems with hierarchical dependencies.…”

“…For example, the large blackout, occurring on August 14, 2003 in areas of Midwest and Northeast United States, and Ontario in Canada, was triggered by the loss of FirstEnergy's overloaded Sammis‐Star line and affected about 50 million people and costed 10 billion US dollars 22,23 . Rich research efforts have been expended in modeling the cascading failure behavior and studying the complex propagation mechanism 24–26 as well as in analyzing the robustness, reliability, vulnerability, and resilience of systems subject to cascading failures 27–33 …”

Assessment of Some Proposed Replacement Models Involving Moderate Fix-Up

“…Wu et al (2021) established corresponding replacement models for a deteriorating repairable system with multiple vacations of one repairman. Xie et al (2020) investigated the implications of cascading failures of a particular system, as well as the effects of safety barriers on preventing failures from occurring. Zhang et al (2022) studied optimizing aliment policy with fix-up limit time for a latest class of airliner unit with an estimated lifespan, and the outcomes of this study provides a helping guidance for airliner program and plays vital usage in engineering practice.…”