Research of the Minimal Cut Sets Post Processing of the PSA Quantification Engine

Abstract

Minimal Cut-sets (MCS) post processing is an important part of the Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) analysis. Two alternative post processing methods have been described in this paper based on traditional and Zero-suppressed Binary Decision Diagram (ZBDD) methods. The first post processing method, named the Quick MCS Post Processing Method, obtains MCS results directly from the cut-sets list using a quick sort method according to a certain set of sorting rules. The alternative post processing method, named the ZBDD Based MCS Post Processing Method, obtains MCS results from the ZBDD structure which encodes the MCS, using the ZBDD algorithm according to the post processing rules. Tests show that both of the two methods can derive the accurate MCS post processing results.