Probability of Loss of Assured Safety in Systems with Multiple Time-Dependent Failure Modes: Incorporation of Delayed Link Failure in the Presence of Aleatory Uncertainty

Abstract

Probability of loss of assured safety (PLOAS) is modeled for weak link (WL)/strong link (SL) systems in which one or more WLs or SLs could potentially degrade into a precursor condition to link failure that will be followed by an actual link failure after some amount of elapsed time. The descriptor loss of assured safety (LOAS) is used because failure of the WL system places the entire system in an inoperable configuration while failure of the SL system before failure of the WL system, although undesirable, does not necessarily result in an unintended operation of the entire system. Thus, safety is “assured” by failure of the WL system before failure of the SL system. The following topics are considered: (i) Definition of precursor occurrence time cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) for individual WLs and SLs, (ii) Formal representation, approximation and illustration of PLOAS with (a) constant delay times, (b) aleatory uncertainty in delay times, and (c) delay times defined by functions of link properties at occurrence times for link failure precursors, and (iii) Procedures for the verification of PLOAS calculations for the three indicated definitions of delayed link failure.