A fuzzy-based reliability approach to evaluate basic events of fault tree

analysis for nuclear power plant probabilistic safety assessment

Julwan Hendry Purba

Reactor Safety Analysis and Assessment Division, Centre for Reactor Technology and Nuclear Safety, National Nuclear Energy Agency (BATAN),
Gd. 80 Kawasan Puspiptek Serpong Tangerang, Banten 15310, Indonesia
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 31 July 2013
Received in revised form 23 February 2014
Accepted 26 February 2014
Available online 20 March 2014
Keywords:
Reliability
Failure possibility
Failure probability
Fuzzy sets
Fault tree analysis
Nuclear power plant
a b s t r a c t
Fault tree analysis has been widely utilized as a tool for nuclear power plant probabilistic safety assess-
ment. This analysis can be completed only if all basic events of the system fault tree have their quanti-
tative failure rates or failure probabilities. However, it is difcult to obtain those failure data due to
insufcient data, environment changing or new components. This study proposes a fuzzy-based reliabil-
ity approach to evaluate basic events of system fault trees whose failure precise probability distributions
of their lifetime to failures are not available. It applies the concept of failure possibilities to qualitatively
evaluate basic events and the concept of fuzzy sets to quantitatively represent the corresponding failure
possibilities. To demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the actual
basic event failure probabilities collected from the operational experiences of the DavidBesse design
of the Babcock and Wilcox reactor protection system fault tree are used to benchmark the failure prob-
abilities generated by the proposed approach. The results conrm that the proposed fuzzy-based reliabil-
ity approach arises as a suitable alternative for the conventional probabilistic reliability approach when
basic events do not have the corresponding quantitative historical failure data for determining their reli-
ability characteristics. Hence, it overcomes the limitation of the conventional fault tree analysis for
nuclear power plant probabilistic safety assessment.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Safety issues for engineering systems are the most concern for
many analysts and researchers. These issues become more signi-
cant for complex engineering systems such as nuclear power
plants (NPPs), which could release radioactive materials into the
environment. NPP safety system evaluation provides safety argu-
ments to convince public that their health and safety are protected
from possible radiation hazards during the NPP lifetime. Fault tree
analysis (FTA) has been used in the last two decades to evaluate the
safety systems of NPPs in studies of the level I probabilistic safety
assessment (PSA) (Guimaraes and Lapa, 2008; Guimaraes et al.,
2011). It provides a comprehensive and structured approach to
identify and understand key plant vulnerabilities, to develop acci-
dent scenarios, to assess the level of plant safety, and to derive
numerical estimates of potential risks (Delaney et al., 2005; Kishi
et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2008). In conventional FTA, it is assumed that
components always have precise probability distributions of their
lifetime to failure. However, this is not the case in real applications.
If a system under evaluation is new, there will be insufcient
statistical data for probabilistically estimating component reliabil-
ities. When FTA applies this limited data to assess system reliabil-
ities, uncertainties contained in the data have to be quantied. A
number of researchers have developed and proposed methodolo-
gies to deal with and quantify uncertainties due to these imprecise
probability distributions (Sankararaman and Mahadevan, 2013;
Volkanovski and Cepin, 2011; Xu et al., 2012). Therefore, it is nec-
essary to develop new techniques, which could effectively deter-
mine component failure probabilities without the need to resort
to the precise failure probability distributions.
Fuzzy set theory was rst introduced as a useful tool to comple-
ment conventional reliability theories in 1989 (Onisawa). Since
then, there have been a number of researchers tempted to develop
techniques involving fuzzy set theory to evaluate system reliabili-
ties. Based on how fuzzy sets are implemented, the fuzzy reliability
approaches have two types of models.
The rst type of fuzzy reliability models only implements a
fuzzication module to assess system reliability. Fuzzication is a
process of converting a crisp value into fuzzy subsets to deal with
uncertainty (Klir and Yuan, 2001). For example, in Di Maio et al.
(2011), a fuzzy C-means clustering was used to classify accident
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2014.02.022
0306-4549/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tel.: +62 81212330661; fax: +62 217560913.

E-mail address: purba-jh@batan.go.id
Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129
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j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ anucene
scenario of a nuclear power plant equipped with a digital instru-
mentation and control system. Dai et al. (2011) combined fuzzy lo-
gic with the multivariate decision diagram and neural network to
diagnose and heal computer system problems. Ding et al. (2010,
2008) proposed a membership function of fuzzy numbers to repre-
sent a sub-system state to assess the reliability of multi-state
weighted k-out-of-n systems. Meanwhile, fuzzy rule based is com-
bined with Bayesian reasoning to obtain failure priority values for
criticality analysis in the failure mode and effect analysis (Yang
et al., 2008).
In the second type of fuzzy reliability models, the fuzzy
reliability approach implements both a fuzzication module and
a defuzzication module. Defuzzication is a process of mapping
membership functions of fuzzy numbers into a crisp form or value
(Klir and Yuan, 2001). For example, in Wang et al. (2011), a fuzzy
model is developed to deal with the drawbacks of the rule-based
quantied cognitive reliability and error analysis method (CREAM)
for power system safety assessment. In this model, the fuzzica-
tion unit decomposes input variables into fuzzy sets and the
defuzzication unit generates a crisp score from the output gener-
ated by the fuzzy inference module. In Gargama and Chaturvedi
(2011), the membership functions of fuzzy numbers are used to
represent linguistic variables and a defuzzication technique has
been used to generate a crisp score for prioritising failure modes
to overcome the limitation of the traditional FMEA. Moreover, Ke
et al. (2008) has used the membership functions for the mean time
to failure of the repairable systems and the crisp value to charac-
terize of the system availability.
In the meantime, previous studies also indicate that qualitative
natural languages are more appropriate for system reliability
assessment when quantitative data is unavailable or inadequate
for the probabilistic reliability approach (Celik et al., 2010; Coletti
and Scozzafava, 2004; Gupta and Bhattacharya, 2007; Hryniewicz,
2007). In addition, experts are also more comfortable to justify
event failure likelihood using qualitative natural languages rather
than quantitative judgment (Ferdous et al., 2011a; Mentes and
Helvacioglu, 2011; Yu and Park, 2000). However, due to the limita-
tion of knowledge and experience, expert elicitation is often
ambiguous and uncertain. Rao et al. (2007) acknowledged that
uncertainties in reliability studies raised in the expert opinions
need to be properly treated. Previous researchers have conrmed
that possibilistic distributions can be used to deal with these prob-
lems (Baraldi and Zio, 2008; Flage et al., 2013). Theory of possibil-
ity, which is proposed by Zadeh (1978), can be mathematically
represented by a membership function of the fuzzy sets (Cho
et al., 2002; Dumitrescu et al., 2006; Vencheh and Allame, 2010;
Wolkenhauer, 2001; Yang et al., 2008).
Those approaches in the second type of fuzzy reliability models
and the fact that experts are more comfortable to assess the reli-
ability of the system qualitatively rather quantitatively when they
are provided with inadequate, improper and inaccurate data be-
come the motivation of this study to overcome the limitation of
the conventional reliability approach. This study aims to propose
a fuzzy-based reliability approach to generate probabilities of basic
events of fault trees whose probability distributions of their life-
time to failures are not available. The approach implements the
concept of failure possibility to qualitatively evaluate basic event
failure likelihoods and the concept of fuzzy sets to mathematically
represent basic event failure possibilities. The involvement of ex-
perts in this proposed approach is different from expert elicitation
techniques in probabilistic reliability approaches. While experts in
probabilistic approaches are asked to provide probability density
functions or cumulative probability functions of events which are
expressed in numerical values (Ayyub, 2001; Boring et al., 2005;
Hammitt and Zhang, 2013; Sankararaman and Mahadevan,
2013), experts in the proposed approach individually assess the
failure likelihood of basic events by choosing one failure possibility
from a number of predened failure possibilities which are ex-
pressed in qualitative linguistic terms. In addition, while uncer-
tainties in probabilistic approach are evaluated using Monte
Carlo simulation (Ferdous et al., 2011b; Hanss and Turrin, 2010),
uncertainties in the proposed approach are captured in the fuzzy
membership functions. Therefore, the proposed approach offers
two main advantages over expert elicitation techniques: (1) ex-
perts can provide their judgements in qualitative words without
being conned with historical failure data and (2) uncertainties
within the experts judgement are directly captured through the
implementation of membership functions of fuzzy sets.
To mathematically demonstrate the feasibility and the effec-
tiveness of the proposed approach, basic event failure probabilities
generated by the approach are compared to the known reliability
data taken from the actual nuclear power plant operating experi-
ences. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
briey denes basic event failure possibility distribution and their
corresponding membership functions, an area defuzzication tech-
nique, and an Onisawas logarithmic function. The proposed fuzzy-
based reliability approach is described in Section 3. In Section 4, an
illustrative case study is given to validate the proposed approach.
Result analysis to verify the proposed approach is described in
Section 5. Finally, Section 6 summarizes the study and provides
further research directions.
2. Denition
This section briey denes the concepts used in the proposed
fuzzy-based reliability approach to generate basic event failure
probabilities of fault trees of nuclear power plant safety systems
from qualitative failure possibilities.
Denition 2.1 (Basic event failure possibility distribution). A basic
event failure possibility distribution is a set of qualitative linguistic
terms used to scale the failure likelihood of the basic events of fault
trees of nuclear power plant safety systems. Based on the range of
the component failure data collected from nuclear power plant
operating experiences, i.e. from 10
13
to 10
2
(IAEA, 1997; Papa-
zoglou et al., 1984; Wierman et al., 2001a,b), seven qualitative
linguistic terms have been dened to grade basic event failure
likelihoods from the less likely to the most likely occurrences.
For example, a very low represents basic events whose failure
probabilities predicted to be less than 10
8
. Meanwhile, a very high
represents basic events whose failure probabilities predicted to be
greater than 10
3
. Basic events with low, reasonably low, moderate,
reasonably high, and high failure possibilities are up-graded from
very low to very high failure possibilities. Those seven linguistic
terms in (1) and their corresponding failure likelihood values are
shown in Table 1 (Purba et al., 2013).
H fh
i
ji 1; 2; . . . ; 7g
Very Low; Low; Reasonably Low; f
Moderate; Reasonably High; High; Very Highg 1
Table 1
Basic event failure likelihood values (Purba et al., 2013).
Basic event failure possibilities Failure probabilities
Very low (h
1
) <1.0E8
Low (h
2
) 1.0E8 1.0E7
Reasonably low (h
3
) 1.0E7 1.0E6
Moderate (h
4
) 1.0E6 1.0E5
Reasonably high (h
5
) 1.0E5 1.0E4
High (h
6
) 1.0E4 1.0E3
Very high (h
7
) >1.0E3
22 J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129
Denition 2.2 (basic event failure possibility membership function).
A basic event failure possibility membership function is a member-
ship function of triangular fuzzy numbers to mathematically repre-
sent a basic event failure possibility in (1) as shown in (2) and (3).
Mfl
i
xji 1; 2; 3; . . . 7g
l
VeryLow
x; l
Low
x; l
ReasonablyLow
x; l
Moderate
x; l
ReasonablyHigh
x;
_
l
High
x; l
VeryHigh
x
_
2
H ! M h
i
! l
i
xjh
1
; l
1
x; h
2
; l
2
x; h
3
; l
3
x; h
4
; l
4
x;
_
h
5
; l
5
x; h
6
; l
6
x; h
7
; l
7
x
_ _
3
Through inductive reasoning technique (Ross, 2004), member-
ship functions of triangular fuzzy numbers have been dened in
the [0, 1] universe discourse to represent basic event fuzzy proba-
bilities. This means that the further the fuzzy probabilities are from
0, the more likely the basic events to fail. Meanwhile, the basic
event failure probabilities are represented by the horizontal axis,
which is also dened in the [0, 1]. The closer the fuzzy numbers
are to 0, the lower the basic event failure probabilities are. On
the other hand, the closer the fuzzy numbers are to 1, the higher
the basic event failure probabilities are. Seven membership func-
tions of triangular fuzzy numbers have been developed in Purba
et al. (2013) to represent those seven basic event failure possibili-
ties in (1). Those membership functions are mathematically given
in (4)(10).
l
Very Low
x l
1
x 0:00; 0:04; 0:08 4
l
Low
x l
2
x 0:07; 0:13; 0:19 5
l
Reasonably Low
x l
3
x 0:17; 0:27; 0:37 6
l
Moderate
x l
4
x 0:35; 0:50; 0:65 7
l
Reasonably High
x l
5
x 0:63; 0:73; 0:83 8
l
High
x l
6
x 0:81; 0:87; 0:93 9
l
Very High
x l
7
x 0:92; 0:96; 1:00 10
Denition 2.3 (area defuzzication technique). An area defuzzi-
cation technique (ADT) utilizes the centroid point of the
membership functions on the vertical axis and its intersection
with the left and the right membership functions as shown by
the grayed area in Fig. 1 to defuzzify fuzzy numbers into a single
value.
ADT dl
A
x x
1
y
0

_
d
x
2
l
R
A
xdx 11
where y
0
is the centroid point of the real fuzzy number

A on the ver-
tical axis, x
1
is the intersection point between the line y
0
and the left
membership function l
L
A
x on the horizontal axis, and x
2
is the
intersection point between the line y
0
and the right membership
function l
R
A
x on the horizontal axis. The y
0
, x
1
and x
2
are calculated
using (12)(14).
y
0

_
w
0
y:l
R
A
ydy
_
w
0
y:l
L
A
ydy
_
w
0
l
R
A
ydy
_
w
0
l
L
A
ydy
12
x
1
l
L
A
y
0
13
x
2
l
R
A
y
0
14
If

A is a normal triangular fuzzy number in which b = c, then its
ADT is calculated using (15).
ADT
1
18
4a b d 15
ADT has been conrmed to be the most suitable technique to
decode membership functions into the corresponding failure possi-
bility scores to be further used for generating failure probabilities
of basic events of fault trees in NPP PSA involving fuzzy numbers
(Purba et al., 2012a).
Denition 2.4 (Onisawas logarithmic function). Onisawa (1988)
proposed a logarithmic function to t the very small error possibil-
ity, which is expressed by a fuzzy subset of the unit interval [0, 1],
to the nature of human judgment. This function considers the
proportionality of human sensation to the logarithmic value of a
physical quantity, as shown in (16).
e
1
1 K log
1
Em
_ _ _ _
3
16
where e is analogous to the failure possibility score, E
m
is the fuzzy
failure rate, and K = 0.435 (Mentes and Helvacioglu, 2011; Onisawa,
1988; Pan and Wang, 2007; Swain and Guttmann, 1983).
3. Fuzzy-based reliability approach
The fuzzy-based reliability approach generates the basic event
failure probabilities of fault trees from the corresponding failure
possibilities in ve steps. Each step is explained in details below.
Step 1: Basic event failure possibility evaluation.
The objective of this step is to collect the failure possibilities of a
set of basic events (B) of a system fault tree being evaluated (FT) in
(17) from a set of experts (E) in (18).
B fb
i
ji 1; 2; 3; . . . ; lg and B 2 FT 17
E fe
i
ji 1; 2; 3; . . . ; ng 18
where b
i
is the ith basic event and l is the number of basic events in
the fault tree. Meanwhile e
i
is the ith expert and n is the number of
experts involved in the basic event evaluation.
An expert is a very skilful person, who understands the working
environment and has considerable training in and knowledge of
the system being evaluated. Three indicators recommended by
Cooke et al. (2008), i.e. the number of scientic publications, rec-
ommendations from a wide range of experts, and experiences with
previous similar studies, can be used to properly select the experts
whose expertise are more relevant to the system being evaluated.
Fig. 1. Area defuzzication technique (Purba et al., 2012b).
J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129 23
However, in real-world applications, the limitation of experts
knowledge and experiences may result in different perceptions
about the same events and consequently provide different assess-
ment (Chin et al., 2009). To correlate experts expertise to their
judgments, different justication weights from 0 to 1 may be as-
signed to every expert as in (19).
W w
i
ji 1; 2; 3; . . . ; n; 0 w
i
1 and

n
i1
w
i
1
_ _
19
where w
i
is the weight of expert e
i
and n is the number of experts.
An expert with a weight of 1 is the most credible, whilst an expert
with a lower weight is deemed to be less credible.
Two key performance-based indicators suggested by Cooke and
Goossens (2008), i.e. calibration and informativeness, can be used
to properly weight each expert. It is important to note that the seed
variables and the calibration questions to weight experts must be
as closely as possible to the problems that the study is intended
to solve (Lin and Bier, 2008).
The matrix of failure possibilities for the set of basic events in
(17), which are collected from the set of experts in (18), can be for-
mulated as in (20). Each expert can individually justify the failure
possibility of each basic event by replying to questions assuming
the form:
What is the failure possibility of the basic event b
i
?
Is it very low, low, reasonably low, moderate, reasonably high,
high, or very high?
Ql
h
e
1
b
1
i
h
e
2
b
1
i
h
e
3
b
1
i
h
enb
1
i
h
e
1
b
2
i
h
e
2
b
2
i
h
e
3
b
2
i
h
enb
2
i
h
e
1
b
3
i
h
e
2
b
3
i
h
e
3
b
3
i
h
enb
3
i
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
h
e
1
b
l
i
h
e
2
b
l
i
h
e
3
b
l
i
h
enb
l
i
_

_
_

_
20
where Ql is the matrix of basic event failure possibilities, h
e
j
b
k
i
is the
ith failure possibility in Table 1 of the basic event b
k
evaluated by
the expert e
j
. Meanwhile, n is the number of experts and l is the
number of basic events. For example, if the failure possibility of
basic event b
2
is given by expert e
3
as h
1
then h
e
j
b
k
i
h
e
3
b
2
1

VeryLow.
Step 2: Failure possibility fuzzication.
The objective of this step is to generate a matrix of membership
functions (Qn) from the matrix of failure possibilities (Ql). The pro-
cess of conversion from Ql to Qn is done by applying (4)(10) into
relations given in (3). Qn can be formulated as in (21).
Qn
l
e
1
b
1
i
l
e
2
b
1
i
l
e
3
b
1
i
l
enb
1
i
l
e
1
b
2
i
l
e
2
b
2
i
l
e
3
b
2
i
l
enb
2
i
l
e
1
b
3
i
l
e
2
b
3
i
l
e
3
b
3
i
l
enb
3
i
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
l
e
1
b
l
i
l
e
2
b
l
i
l
e
3
b
l
i
l
enb
l
i
_

_
_

_
21
where l
e
j
b
k
i
x in Qn is the corresponding membership function of
the h
e
j
b
k
i
in Ql. For example, if the h
e
j
b
k
i
in Ql is Very Low then
l
e
j
b
k
i
x in Qn is (0.00, 0.04, 0.08).
Step 3: Basic event nal membership function generation.
The objective of this step is to generate a vector of nal
membership functions (M
B
) for the set of basic events in (17).
Vector M
B
is generated by multiplying matrix Qn in (21) with the
set of experts weights in (18) using a weighted average method
as formulated in (22).
M
B

l
b
1
x
l
b
2
x
l
b
3
x
.
.
.
l
b
l
x
_

_
_

l
e
1
b
1
i
l
e
2
b
1
i
l
e
3
b
1
i
l
enb
1
i
l
e
1
b
2
i
l
e
2
b
2
i
l
e
3
b
2
i
l
enb
2
i
l
e
1
b
3
i
l
e
2
b
3
i
l
e
3
b
3
i
l
enb
3
i
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
l
e
1
b
l
i
l
e
2
b
l
i
l
e
3
b
l
i
l
enb
l
i
_

_
_

w
1
w
2
w
3
.
.
.
w
n
_

_
_

_
22
where l
b
k
x is the nal membership function for basic event b
k
,
l
e
j
b
k
i
x is the ith membership function given by expert e
j
to basic
event b
k
, w
j
is the weight given to expert e
j
, n is the number of ex-
perts, and l is the number of basic events.
Step 4: Membership function defuzzication.
The objective of this step is to generate a vector of failure pos-
sibility scores R
B
S
for the set of basic events in (17). A failure pos-
sibility score is a single numerical value, which is decoded from a
membership function, to represent the experts belief of the most
likely score indicating that an event may occur. Vector R
B
S
is gener-
ated by decoding vector M
B
in (22) using the area defuzzication
technique given in (15) as formulated in (23).
R
B
s

R
b
1
s
R
b
2
s
R
b
3
s
.
.
.
R
b
l
s
_

_
_

ADTl
b
1
x
ADTl
b
2
x
ADTl
b
3
x
.
.
.
ADTl
b
l
x
_

_
_

_
23
R
b
i
s
is a failure possibility score for basic event b
i
which is defuzzied
from its nal membership function ADTl
b
i
x.
Step 5: Basic event failure probability generation.
The objective of this step is to generate a vector of failure prob-
abilities (R
B
) for the set of basic events in (17). Vector R
B
is gener-
ated by inserting vector R
B
S
in (23) into the Onisawas logarithmic
function dened in Section 2 as formulated in (24).
R
B

R
b
1
R
b
2
R
b
3
.
.
.
R
b
l
_

_
_

f R
b
1
s

f R
b
2
s

f R
b
3
s

.
.
.
f R
b
l
s

_

_
_

_
24
where f R
b
i
s

1
10
1R
b
i
s
R
b
i
s
_ _
1=3
2:301
_ _
; R
b
i
s
0
0; R
b
i
s
0
_

_
The failure probabilities generated in (24) will be similar to the
failure probabilities, which are statistically calculated from the
available historical failure data.
4. An illustrative case study
This section describes the data sets used to benchmark and to
mathematically illustrate the quantication process of the pro-
posed fuzzy-based reliability approach.
4.1. Basic event data sets
A reactor protection system is one of many safety systems in
commercial reactors that comprises numerous electronic and
mechanical components to produce an automatic or manual rapid
shutdown when the reactor experiences disturbed conditions and
requires a trip to stop the nuclear reaction. The failure of the
24 J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129
DavidBesse design of the Babcock and Wilcox reactor protection
system, which is dened as the number of the safety rods inserted
into the core is not sufcient to stop the nuclear reaction, is used to
benchmark the proposed fuzzy-based reliability approach. Mean-
while, the failure probabilities of the basic events of the system
fault tree, which are compiled through complicated procedures
including failure data collection and characterization, demand data
collection and characterization, and data analysis during the period
1984 through 1998, are shown in Table 2. The details of this safety
system and related basic event failure probabilities can be found in
Wierman et al. (2001a).
The failure probabilities of basic events in Table 2 are presented
in three different values, i.e. lower bound, best estimate and upper
bound values. The best estimate reliability value is the recom-
mended reliability data to be used in the fault tree analysis. Mean-
while, the upper and the lower bound reliability values represent a
range of reliability data estimation. To verify the feasibility and the
applicability of the proposed approach, the basic event failure
probabilities generated by the proposed fuzzy-based reliability ap-
proach have to be between the upper and the lower bound reliabil-
ity values and as close as possible to the best estimate reliability
value. We can see from Table 2 that there are 29 basic events of
the fault tree of the DavidBesse design of the Babcock and Wilcox
reactor protection system to be assessed using the proposed ap-
proach. Two basic events from Table 2, i.e. b
20
and b
25
are used
to mathematically illustrate the quantication process of the pro-
posed approach. The failure probabilities for all other 27 basic
events are summarized in Table 4.
4.2. Quantication process of the fuzzy-based reliability approach
For illustration purposes only, let us assume that the higher
management level assign seven experts with the same level of
expertise about the DavidBesse design of the Babcock and Wilcox
reactor protection system. Hence, the same justication weights of
1/7 are assigned to each expert. However, in real implementation,
experts should be properly selected and weighted based on the
two key performances described in Section 3.
Step 1: Failure possibility evaluation.
Using the format of questions described in Section 3, all the
seven experts individually justify the failure probabilities of the
29 basic events in Table 2. The failure possibilities given by each
expert to each basic event are shown in Table 3.
Since the purpose of this case study is to mathematically
demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed
fuzzy-based reliability approach, those basic event failure possibil-
ities given in Table 3 are just of illustrative characters of experts to
obtain the closest matching failure probabilities to the known best
estimate values. Those data are not collected from real experts who
understand the working environment of the DavidBesse design of
the Babcock and Wilcox reactor protection system but they are
generated by simulation. However, in real implementation, failure
possibilities of basic events of fault trees should be directly and
individually justied by the real experts who have already been se-
lected and weighted.
Using the data in Table 3, the matrix of the failure possibilities
(Ql) for basic events, for example i.e. b
20
and b
25
, can be written as
in (25).
Ql
h
3
h
2
h
3
h
1
h
3
h
3
h
3
h
1
h
1
h
2
h
1
h
2
h
3
h
2
_ _
25
where h
1
= very low, h
2
= low and h
3
= reasonably low.
Step 2: Failure possibility fuzzication.
Table 2
The failure probabilities of the basic events of the DavidBesse design of the Babcock and Wilcox reactor protection system fault tree (Wierman et al., 2001a).
Basic
event ID
Fault tree basic events Basic event description Known reliability
Lower
bound
Best
estimate
Upper
bound
b
1
BWD-BME-FO-ACTBA,B,C,D Trip breaker local hardware faults 4.3E6 1.8E5 4.5E5
b
2
BWD-BSN-FF-ACTBA,B,C,D Shunt trip device local faults 2.3E4 6.1E4 1.2E3
b
3
BWD-BUV-FF-ACTBA,B,C,D Under-voltage coil device local faults 1.1E4 2.3E4 4.0E4
b
4
BWD-CBI-FFPA,B,C,D Channel trip unit (bi-stable) fails to trip at its pressure setpoint 1.3E4 2.9E4 5.5E4
b
5
BWD-CBI-FFTA,B,C,D Channel trip unit (bi-stable) fails to trip at its temperature setpoint 1.3E4 2.9E4 5.5E4
b
6
BWD-CPR-FFPA,B,C,D Channel reactor vessel pressure sensor/transmitter fails to detect a high pressure
and send a signal to the trip unit
4.0E6 1.6E4 6.0E4
b
7
BWD-CTP-FFTA,B,C,D Channel reactor vessel level sensor/transmitter fails to detect a low level and send
a signal to the trip unit
6.3E6 1.2E4 4.1E4
b
8
BWD-MSW-FFMT1,2,3,4 Manual scram switch fails to operate upon demand 4.1E5 1.3E4 2.8E4
b
9
BWD-RYL-FFLRA,B,C,D1,2,3,4 Channel or trip system logic relay fails to de-energize upon demand 6.8E6 2.1E5 4.6E5
b
10
BWD-RYL-FFTRA,B,C,D Channel or trip system logic relay fails to de-energize upon demand 6.8E6 2.1E5 4.6E5
b
11
BWD-RYL-FF-DC10,DD10 Channel or trip system logic relay fails to de-energize upon demand 6.8E6 2.1E5 4.6E5
b
12
BWD-BME-CF-TB2OF4 CCF 2 of 4 trip breaker local hardware faults 8.0E8 7.1E7 2.2E6
b
13
BWD-BSN-CF- TB2OF4 CCF 2 of 4 shunt trip device local faults 3.8E6 2.3E5 6.7E5
b
14
BWD-BUV-CF- TB2OF4 CCF 2 of 4 under voltage coil device local faults 1.4E6 7.5E6 2.1E5
b
15
BWD-CBI-CFCBI4OF6TM CCF specic 4 of 6 CBIs (T and M) 7.3E8 8.7E7 2.9E6
b
16
BWD-CBI-CF-CBI6OF8 CCF specic 6 of 8 CBIs 1.3E8 4.0E7 1.5E6
b
17
BWD-CPR-CF-P2OF3TM CCF 2 of 3 CPRs (T and M) 2.8E6 6.4E6 1.2E5
b
18
BWD-CPR-CF-P3OF4 CCF 3 of 4 CPRs 4.4E7 2.1E6 5.4E6
b
19
BWD-CTP-CF- T2OF3TM CCF 2 of 3 CTPs (T and M) 1.7E7 5.0E6 1.9E5
b
20
BWD-CTP-CF- T3OF4 CCF 3 of 4 CTPs 2.4E8 1.5E6 5.8E6
b
21
BWD-MSW-CF-2OF4 CCF specic 2 of 4 manual trip switches 6.4E7 5.4E6 1.7E5
b
22
BWD-PWR-CF-TB2OF4 CCF specic 2 of 4 trip breaker shunt trip device power 2.3E7 2.5E6 8.3E6
b
23
BWD-ROD-CF-RODS CCF 20% or more CRD/rods fail to insert 1.2E9 4.1E8 4.6E7
b
24
BWD-RYL-CFLR6OF12TM CCF specic 6 of 12 logic relays (T and M) 7.0E9 5.9E8 1.8E7
b
25
BWD-RYL-CF-LR9OF16 CCF specic 9 of 16 logic relays 2.4E9 3.3E8 1.2E7
b
26
BWD-RYL-CFTR2OF3TM CCF 2 of 3 trip relays (T and M) 1.6E7 1.1E6 3.2E6
b
27
BWD-RYL-CF-TR3OF4 CCF 3 of 4 trip relays 1.9E8 3.3E7 1.2E6
b
28
BWD-RYL-CF-LR3OF8 CCF specic 3 of 8 logic relays for diverse trip 1.5E7 8.4E7 2.3E6
b
29
BWD-RYL-CF-LR2OF6TM CCF specic 2 of 6 logic relays for diverse trip (T and M) 6.3E7 2.5E6 6.2E6
J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129 25
Using (21), the matrix of membership functions (Qn) for the
corresponding matrix of basic event failure possibilities (Ql) in
(25) is shown in (26).
Qn
l
3
x l
2
x l
3
x l
1
x l
3
x l
3
x l
3
x
l
1
x l
1
x l
2
x l
1
x l
2
x l
3
x l
2
x
_ _
26
where l
1
(x) = (0.00, 0.04, 0.08), l
2
(x) = (0.07, 0.13, 0.19) and
l
3
(x) = (0.17, 0.27, 0.37).
Step 3: Basic event nal membership function generation.
Using (22), the nal membership functions for the basic events
in (26) are obtained as follows.
l
b
20
x
l
b
25
x
_ _

0:13; 0:22; 0:30
0:05; 0:11; 0:17
_ _
27
The nal membership functions of other basic events generated
in this step are given in Table 5 in Appendix A.
Step 4: Membership function defuzzication.
By substituting (27) into (23), the failure possibility scores for
basic events b
20
and b
25
are generated as follows.
R
b
20
s
R
b
25
s
_ _

ADT0:13; 0:22; 0:30

ADT0:05; 0:11; 0:17
_ _

1
18
40:130:220:30
1
18
40:050:110:17
_ _

0:058095
0:027619
_ _
28
The failure possibility scores of other basic events generated in
this step are given in Table 5 in Appendix A.
Step 5: Basic event failure probability generation.
Using (24), for example, the failure probabilities for basic events
b
20
and b
25
are generated as follows.
R
b
20
R
b
25
_ _

1
10
_
1 0:058095
0:058095
_
1=3
2:301
1
10
_
1 0:027619
0:027619
_
1=3
2:301
_

_
_

1:50E 06
2:87E 08
_ _
29
The failure probabilities of other basic events generated in this step
are given in Table 4. From (29), we can see that the proposed
Table 3
Basic event failure possibilities individually assessed by experts.
Basic events Basic event failure possibility individually evaluated by
e
1
e
2
e
3
e
4
e
5
e
6
e
7
b
1
Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Reasonably low Reasonably low
b
2
High High Reasonably high High High High High
b
3
Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Reasonably high Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high
b
4
Reasonably high Reasonably high Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Reasonably high Reasonably high
b
5
Reasonably high Reasonably high Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Reasonably high Reasonably high
b
6
Moderate Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Moderate
b
7
Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Moderate Moderate Moderate Moderate
b
8
Reasonably low Moderate Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high Moderate Reasonably high
b
9
Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Low Moderate Reasonably low Moderate
b
10
Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Low Moderate Reasonably low Moderate
b
11
Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Low Moderate Reasonably low Moderate
b
12
Low Reasonably low Reasonably low Low Low Low Reasonably low
b
13
Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Low Moderate
b
14
Reasonably low Reasonably low Reasonably low Reasonably low Reasonably low Moderate Reasonably low
b
15
Very Low Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Reasonably low Low Reasonably low
b
16
Low Low Low Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Low
b
17
Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Moderate Low Reasonably low Moderate
b
18
Low Reasonably low Reasonably low Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Reasonably low
b
19
Low Moderate Reasonably low Moderate Low Reasonably low Low
b
20
Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Very low Reasonably low Reasonably low reasonably low
b
21
Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Moderate Reasonably low Reasonably low Reasonably low
b
22
Reasonably low Low Low Moderate Reasonably low Low Reasonably low
b
23
Low Low Low Very Low Low Low Low
b
24
Low Reasonably low Low Very Low Low Very Low Low
b
25
Very low Very low Low Very low Low Reasonably low Low
b
26
Reasonably low Low Low Low Low Moderate Low
b
27
Low Very Low Low Reasonably low Very Low Reasonably low Reasonably low
b
28
Low Low Reasonably low Low Reasonably low Low Reasonably low
b
29
Reasonably low Low Low Low Moderate Reasonably low Reasonably low
l
b
20
x
l
b
25
x
_ _

0:17;0:27; 0:37 0:07; 0:13; 0:19 0:17; 0:27; 0:37 0:00; 0:04; 0:08 0:17; 0:27; 0:37 0:17; 0:27; 0:37 0:17; 0:27; 0:37
0:00;0:04; 0:08 0:00; 0:04; 0:08 0:07; 0:13;0:19 0:00; 0:04; 0:08 0:07; 0:13; 0:19 0:17; 0:27; 0:37 0:07; 0:13; 0:19
_ _
1=7
1=7
1=7
1=7
1=7
1=7
1=7
_

_
_

_
26 J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129
fuzzy-based reliability approach can generate basic event failure
probabilities, which have similar forms to the ones probabilistically
calculated using historical failure data.
5. Analysis of results
Table 4 summarizes the failure probabilities generated by the
proposed fuzzy-based reliability approach for all the basic events
in Table 2 together with the ones probabilistically calculated from
the available historical failure data, which are well documented in
Wierman et al. (2001a). The generated failure probabilities shown
in Table 4 are the round-off values to match the format of the known
failure probabilities. Meanwhile, the relative error is calculated
using the generated and the best estimate failure probabilities.
It can be seen from Table 4 that the failure probabilities gener-
ated by the proposed approach are very close to the best estimate
reliability value calculated through complicated procedures
involving failure data collection and characterization, demand data
collection and characterization, and data analysis during the period
1984 through 1998. This can be seen from the small number of the
relative errors calculated from the generated and the best estimate
failure probabilities.
In general, these results have demonstrated that the proposed
fuzzy-based reliability approach can be feasibly used as an
alternative approach for the conventional probabilistic reliability
approach when basic events do not have corresponding precise
probability distributions of their lifetime to failures. These results
also verify that expert subjective evaluations can be in good agree-
ment with the real quantitative failure probabilities collected from
nuclear power plant operating experiences. Based on this case
study, it has been conrmed that the proposed approach exhibits
three advantageous: (1) it offers practitioners a more realistic ap-
proach to evaluate reliability of basic events of fault trees without
being conned to quantitative historical failure data; (2) experts
can utilize their expertise, scientic intuition and working experi-
ences, which otherwise cannot be represented by numerical val-
ues, to subjectively justify basic event reliability data using the
seven qualitative failure possibilities which have already been
developed; (3) safety analysts can utilize the seven membership
functions of triangular fuzzy numbers to quantitatively represent
those seven predened failure possibilities to determine the prob-
ability of the top event of a system fault tree.
However, if the illustrative characters of experts other than
those given in Table 3 are applied, the relative errors calculated
from the generated and the best estimate failure probabilities will
be larger than those presented in Table 4. Therefore, it is very
important to properly select and weight experts to subjectively
justify failure possibilities of basic events of system fault trees un-
der evaluation. It will be interesting to see, in the future research,
how the proposed fuzzy-based reliability approach will perform
for real NPP PSA whose basic event failure possibilities are directly
collected from experts.
It is also important to note that if basic events to be evaluated
have quantitative probability distribution of their lifetime to
failures, conventional probabilistic reliability approach should be
utilized. The calculation results of this conventional approach will
represent the actual reliability values of those basic events. On the
other hand, if the experts subjective opinions are the only method
to evaluate basic event failure occurrences, the proposed fuzzy-
based reliability approach offers a feasible and effective solution.
6. Conclusions and further studies
This study has proposed a fuzzy-based reliability approach to
deal with qualitative linguistic terms to evaluate the failure likeli-
hoods of basic events of nuclear power plant safety system fault
trees. Basic event failure likelihood are characterized in terms of
failure possibilities and mathematically represented by the mem-
bership functions of fuzzy numbers. Using the case study, the
applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed approach are
Table 4
Basic event failure probabilities.
Fault tree basic events Generated failure probability Known failure probability Relative error
Lower bound Best estimate Upper bound
b
1
1.8E5 4.3E6 1.8E5 4.5E5 0.009559
b
2
6.4E4 2.3E4 6.1E4 1.2E3 0.051873
b
3
2.3E4 1.1E4 2.3E4 4.0E4 0.008453
b
4
2.8E4 1.3E4 2.9E4 5.5E4 0.020326
b
5
2.8E4 1.3E4 2.9E4 5.5E4 0.020326
b
6
1.5E4 4.0E6 1.6E4 6.0E4 0.077575
b
7
1.1E4 6.3E6 1.2E4 4.1E4 0.046322
b
8
1.2E4 4.1E5 1.3E4 2.8E4 0.073070
b
9
2.1E5 6.8E6 2.1E5 4.6E5 0.011509
b
10
2.1E5 6.8E6 2.1E5 4.6E5 0.011509
b
11
2.1E5 6.8E6 2.1E5 4.6E5 0.011509
b
12
7.6E7 8.0E8 7.1E7 2.2E6 0.069403
b
13
2.1E5 3.8E6 2.3E5 6.7E5 0.076449
b
14
7.5E6 1.4E6 7.5E6 2.1E5 0.005157
b
15
9.1E7 7.3E8 8.7E7 2.9E6 0.047176
b
16
4.1E7 1.3E8 4.0E7 1.5E6 0.036420
b
17
6.9E6 2.8E6 6.4E6 1.2E5 0.079637
b
18
2.0E6 4.4E7 2.1E6 5.4E6 0.036855
b
19
5.0E6 1.7E7 5.0E6 1.9E5 0.006601
b
20
1.5E6 2.4E8 1.5E6 5.8E6 0.000282
b
21
5.5E6 6.4E7 5.4E6 1.7E5 0.025444
b
22
2.7E6 2.3E7 2.5E6 8.3E6 0.083813
b
23
4.3E8 1.2E9 4.1E8 4.6E7 0.038273
b
24
6.1E8 7.0E9 5.9E8 1.8E7 0.035119
b
25
2.9E8 2.4E9 3.3E8 1.2E7 0.129115
b
26
1.1E6 1.6E7 1.1E6 3.2E6 0.006549
b
27
3.3E7 1.9E8 3.3E7 1.2E6 0.003676
b
28
7.6E7 1.5E7 8.4E7 2.3E6 0.096100
b
29
2.7E6 6.3E7 2.5E6 6.2E6 0.083813
J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129 27
validated by benchmarking the generated failure probabilities to
the actual failure probabilities collected and calculated from the
operating experiences of the DavidBesse design of the Babcock
and Wilcox reactor protection system. The results conrm that
the proposed fuzzy-based reliability approach offers a very good
alternative approach to assess basic event reliability when histori-
cal quantitative data is insufcient or unavailable to invoke proba-
bilistic methods.
While the study has offered an alternative reliability approach,
there are still a number of interesting avenues to pursue. More
experimentation using various data sets coming from other nucle-
ar power plants fault tree analysis would be advantageous to gain a
better assessment of the performance of the fuzzy-based reliability
approach.
Appendix A
See Table 5.
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Table 5
Data generated by the fuzzy-based reliability approach.
Basic
events
Final membership
functions
Failure possibility
scores
Failure
probabilities
b
1
(0.25, 0.37, 0.49) 0.102619 1.8E5
b
2
(0.78, 0.85, 0.92) 0.272381 6.4E4
b
3
(0.55, 0.66, 0.78) 0.202381 2.3E4
b
4
(0.59, 0.70, 0.80) 0.214524 2.8E4
b
5
(0.59, 0.70, 0.80) 0.214524 2.8E4
b
6
(0.47, 0.60, 0.73) 0.178095 1.5E4
b
7
(0.43, 0.57, 0.70) 0.165952 1.1E4
b
8
(0.44, 0.57, 0.69) 0.168333 1.2E4
b
9
(0.26, 0.38, 0.50) 0.106667 2.1E5
b
10
(0.26, 0.38, 0.50) 0.106667 2.1E5
b
11
(0.26, 0.38, 0.50) 0.106667 2.1E5
b
12
(0.11, 0.19, 0.27) 0.050476 7.6E7
b
13
(0.26, 0.38, 0.50) 0.106667 2.1E5
b
14
(0.20, 0.30, 0.41) 0.083095 7.5E6
b
15
(0.12, 0.20, 0.28) 0.052381 9.1E7
b
16
(0.10, 0.17, 0.24) 0.044762 4.1E7
b
17
(0.19, 0.30, 0.40) 0.081429 6.9E6
b
18
(0.14, 0.23, 0.32) 0.061905 2.0E6
b
19
(0.18, 0.28, 0.37) 0.075714 5.0E6
b
20
(0.13, 0.22, 0.30) 0.058095 1.5E6
b
21
(0.18, 0.28, 0.38) 0.077381 5.5E6
b
22
(0.15, 0.24, 0.33) 0.065952 2.7E6
b
23
(0.06, 0.12, 0.17) 0.029524 4.3E8
b
24
(0.06, 0.12, 0.18) 0.031429 6.1E8
b
25
(0.05, 0.11, 0.17) 0.027619 2.9E8
b
26
(0.12, 0.20, 0.28) 0.054524 1.1E6
b
27
(0.09, 0.16, 0.24) 0.042857 3.3E7
b
28
(0.11, 0.19, 0.27) 0.050476 7.6E7
b
29
(0.15, 0.24, 0.33) 0.065952 2.7E6
28 J.H. Purba / Annals of Nuclear Energy 70 (2014) 2129
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