Probabilistic analysis of fault trees using pivotal decomposition.
William T. McCullers · Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) · 1985
An algorithm is presented for computing the exact failure probability for binary systems represented as fault trees. This algorithm does not rely on cut sets. Instead, it applies recursive pivotal decomposition together with probabilistic structural reductions and modularization directly to the fault tree. A further capability of the algorithm is the sequential printing of equations to form a function for a specific fault tree which computes system failure probability given the basic event probabilities.