COMCAN3. System Safety Common Cause Analysis

The COMCAN fault tree analysis codes are designed to analyze complex systems such as nuclear plants for common causes of failure. A common cause event, or common mode failure, is a secondary cause that could contribute to the failure of more than one component and violates the assumption of independence. Analysis of such events is an integral part of system reliability and safety analysis. A significant common cause event is a secondary cause common to all basic events in one or more minimal cut sets. Minimal cut sets containing events from components sharing a common location or a common link are called common cause candidates. Components share a common location if no barrier insulates any one of them from the secondary cause. A common link is a dependency among components which cannot be removed by a physical barrier (e.g.,a common energy source or common maintenance instructions).