Study on fault tree of long gas transmission pipelines

Fault tree analysis is an important technique that is widely used for complex systems to make safety and reliability evaluation. It has bright future of application in the fields of failure prediction and prevention for long gas transmission pipelines. On the data acquisition and analysis, by the 2 major failure modes of leakage and rupture, the fault tree is set up for a long gas transmission pipeline. With qualitative analysis of the fault tree, all the minimal cut sets of the fault tree are obtained. With quantitative analysis, the probability, the probability importance and the criticality importance of the basic events of the fault tree are calculated, and the failure probability of top events is determined for the pipeline. The study results show the steel pipe quality, weld quality, installation quality, material selection, mechanical damage and operator quality etc. are the major factors to affect the safety and reliability of gas pipelines. And the computer software is developed for the fault tree analysis of long gas transmission pipelines.