A model of failure propagation process

With the development of towns, various systems, such as chemical plants, water supply and sewage systems, are growing in size and complexity. Therefore, once a failure occurs at one part of a system, its influence spreads extensively to large peripheral areas. Therefore, the key problem is how to protect the systems against the failure propagation to maintain the system safety and reliability. However, the preventive maintenance design or prearranged measures are hard to prepare due to insufficient analysis of the failure propagation process in complicated systems. This paper proposes a method of building a model of failure propagation process structurally and quantitatively to help in designing preventive maintenance. This method consists in a failure propagation network based on the failure propagation linkages between a failure element and its adjacent failure elements in the system. In addition, it permits the failure propagation simulation, function survival route search, and assessment of risks caused by the failure propagation, with the help of failure transition probability and matrix operation.