A hybrid approach for safety analysis of aircraft systems

Abstract

Safeness is one of the major concerns in the design of aircraft systems. Most of the aircraft components are provided with redundancy. The degree of redundancy of each component depends on a number of factors such as the kind and probability of fault, per hour of flight. Usually, in order to estimate how safe an aircraft system is, the probabilities of fault in each one of the system components are combined in a static approach using methods such as fault-tree analysis. These methods derive the total probability of fault in the system, which must be within predefined limits. The maximum allowed probability of fault depends on how the system deteriorates the level of flight quality and how it affects the aircraft operation and functionality. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.