A numerical simulation method for a repairable dynamic fault tree

Dynamic fault trees are important tools for modeling systems with sequence failure behaviors. The Markov chain state space method is the only analytical approach for a repairable dynamic fault tree (DFT). However, this method suffers from state space explosion, and is not suitable for analyzing a large scale repairable DFT. Furthermore, the Markov chain state space method requires the components’ time-to-failure to follow exponential distributions, which limits its application. In this study, motivated to efficiently analyze a repairable DFT, a Monte Carlo simulation method based on the coupling of minimal cut sequence set (MCSS) and its sequential failure region (SFR) is proposed. To validate the proposed method, a numerical case was studied. The results demonstrated that our proposed approach was more efficient than other methods and applicable for repairable DFTs with arbitrary time-to-failure distributed components. In contrast to the Markov chain state space method, the proposed method is straightforward, simple and efficient.