Bridging the gap between Fault Tree Analysis Modeling Tools and the Systems being Modeled

Fault tolerant systems comprise of subsystems that interact with each other in complex ways [Joh89]. As a result, modeling the reliability of these systems calls for sophisticated analytical techniques. A powerful technique to address this issue is dynamic fault tree analysis [Dug92]. But because the semantics on which Dynamic Fault Trees are based are themselves complex, there was a question of whether these dynamic fault tree models were indeed faithful representations of the systems, and whether their analytical models are correct. The existing definitions of the modeling constructs employed by Dynamic Fault Trees were not precise or consistent enough, leading to ambiguities in the interpretation of the dynamic gates.