Design of an Electrical Power System using a Functional Failure and Flow State Logic Reasoning Methodology

Knowledge about failures and failure propagation paths in early design can benefit Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system development by identifying expected system failures, determining adequate system monitoring, and improving system reliability through hardware configurational changes. Function-based failure analysis provides a means for early system representation that can provide meaningful results for failure analysis. Function-based failure analysis methods model failures propagating between components based on shared energy, material, and signal (EMS) flows. Limiting these connections to the designed system representation limits the scope of failure impact and propagation analysis. This paper presents a method of defining and reasoning on flow states for designed and potential EMS flows and using this information to determine impact and propagation behavior for failures based on early design information. To demonstrate the value of this approach, an electrical power system design is developed and analyzed as a case study. The initial results presented in this paper specifically benefit the development of PHM by providing simulated system behavior for a wide scope of propagation paths and by identifying the impact of failures with respect to system functions.