The propagation of faults in process plants: 7, divider and header units in fault tree synthesis

Abstract An interactive, computer-based facility has been developed for the investigation of fault propagation in process plants, including fault tree synthesis, which is embodied in the FAULTFINDER code. The general development and status of the work and the modelling are described in an overview paper and work on control systems, on trip systems and on fault tree synthesis in further companion papers. This paper describes the handling of divider and header units in the methodology, including the automatic identification of divider-header loops, the development of partial fault trees for the individual legs of a loop, the use of a divider-header template to combine these partial trees, and the modelling of certain units which occur in the legs, and gives illustrative examples.