Exploring Typical Issues in Application of Fault Tree Analysis to Airborne Systems Safety Assessment

Abstract

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is one of the core methods for safety assessment of various types of products, and is particularly widely used in the development process of aviation products and the verification of airworthiness compliance. However, in practical engineering applications, safety assessments based on FTA are often constrained by the accuracy of fault tree construction. This paper systematically explores how to better support aviation product safety assessment using FTA, with a focus on how to ensure consistency between fault tree construction and design architecture in engineering practice, thereby guaranteeing the results of qualitative and quantitative evaluations. To address the issue of consistency between fault tree construction and design, this paper proposes the adoption of a model-based safety analysis (MBSA) approach based on the dataflow concept. Finally, using an abstracted control architecture as an example, an illustrative application of MBSA is presented to automatically generate fault trees and perform quantitative safety evaluation. The preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.