Introduction to Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)

There are times when it is essential to avoid an undesirable event or other high-risk situation that has numerous and complex potential contributors. This chapter is a brief overview of fault tree analysis (FTA) and how it relates to failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), including its history, procedures, and examples. FTA is used mainly to quantitatively determine the probability of a complex safety hazard in order to develop actions to mitigate or eliminate the hazard. It is a top-down graphical model of the pathways and unique relationships within a system that can lead to an unwanted top-level event. Events and gates are symbols that represent the logic of the analysis. There are many types of events used in FTA, the most common being top-level event, intermediate event, and basic event. Controlled Vocabulary Terms failure analysis; fault trees