COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD FOR GENERATING A MIXED-LAYER FAULT TREE OF A MULTI-COMPONENT SYSTEM COMBINING DIFFERENT LAYERS OF ABSTRACTION

The present invention pertains to a method for generating a fault tree of a multi-component system. The multicomponent system comprises a logical-functional system layer and a physical system layer as different layers of abstraction. The physical system layer may correspond, for example, to software and/or hardware implementing the functional aspects of the logical-functional system layer. The method first provides a logical-functional fault tree for the logical-functional system layer and a physical fault tree for the physical system layer, the latter having elements corresponding to elements in the logical-functional fault tree. Next, a mixed-layer fault tree is generated by combining aspects of both fault trees in a systematic way.The present invention is particularly relevant for analyzing safety-critical systems. However, the present concepts are not limited to these applications and may be applied to general use cases where fault tree analysis is applicable. The solution of the present invention advantageously provides a systematic approach to generate fault trees taking into account both the logical-functional and the technical-physical aspects of a multi-component system. The resulting fault tree can thus be easily extended, modified and/or reused during a system's life-cycle.