Integration of Fault Tree Analysis into Model-Based Product Line Engineering in Railway Vehicles

Reliability analysis based on fault trees is one of the important methods for determining the cause of system failure by beginning from the top event and proceeding to the basic events, however, it is usually overlooked in the first stages of designing complex systems. The main reason is the requirement for in-depth knowledge about the characteristics and behavior of the system. This study provides a solution for reliability analysis by generating fault trees based on Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) and Product Line Engineering (PLE). System Modelling Language (SysML) diagrams are leveraged to detect and model failure points of the system and to map them into fault trees. Moreover, to develop the proposed solution for product families and detect variability-related failure points from PLE, we use pure::variants diagrams to develop fault trees. To investigate the validity of the proposed approach, as a case study, we present the process of fault tree generation from SysML and pure::variants diagrams in railway vehicles. Finally, a number of important challenges and limitations are explained briefly.