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.