Combining different binary decision diagram techniques for solving models with multiple failure states

Abstract

This article explains information flow diagrams (IFDs) in great detail. With these models, scenarios leading to dangerous failures as well as spurious shutdowns can be generated, taking into account several failure modes for basic components. These scenarios can be evaluated in a qualitative and quantified way. For an efficient solution different BDD-techniques were combined, mainly zero suppressed BDDs and binary expression diagrams. It is shown how these techniques were used for the model and how a large BDD is created by assembling several smaller diagrams, so that even large and complex systems can be described and evaluated in a compact and efficient way.