Affiliations: [a] Key Laboratory of Aircraft Environment Control and Life Support, MIIT, Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Nanjing, China | [b] Aviation Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Life-Support Technology, Xiangyang, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Jian-Hong Sun, Key Laboratory of Aircraft Environment Control and Life Support, MIIT, Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, China. Tel.: +86 025 84896099; E-mail: jhsun@nuaa.edu.cn
Abstract: The reliability of the emergency flotation system of helicopters is analysed by using fault tree analysis and the Monte Carlo method. We constructed a fault tree with the failure of system as the top event and obtained the minimal cut set, the ranking of the structural importance of the bottom events and the probability of the occurrence of the top event. Based on the system fault tree, a Monte Carlo simulation model of the emergency flotation system is established by using Matlab/Simulink. The results show that the Monte Carlo method is feasible and effective for the reliability analysis of the emergency flotation systems of helicopters. Furthermore, the comparison between the criticality importance and mode importance of each subsystem suggests that the control component is the weakest part of the emergency flotation systems, thereby providing a basis for system reliability design and fault diagnosis.
Keywords: Helicopter emergency flotation system, fault tree analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, reliability analysis
