APPLICATION OF FAULT TREE ANALYSIS TO LONGITUDINAL CONTROL IN AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEMS: Fid-Bau Portal

APPLICATION OF FAULT TREE ANALYSIS TO LONGITUDINAL CONTROL IN AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEMS

Faghri, Ardeshir / Egyhaziova, Erika

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is a group of technologies that provide the tools to help address many of the current surface transportation problems. ITS applies technologies in such fields as electronics, communications, control and information processing to surface transportation needs. Automated Highway Systems (AHS) is one of the most important components of ITS which embodies the full development of automatic vehicle control to achieve the highest levels of efficiency and safety on the highway. The reliability and availability of the AHS using a fault tree and a mathematical model of its failure is presented in this paper. The proper functioning of the system is dependent on many components including the communication system between successive vehicles, data acquisition system, transmitter and other software and hardware. Failure on the part of these elements affects the reliability of the whole system. This study presents the application of fault tree analysis to model failure mechanisms of AHS. Qualitative and quantitative analysis are performed on the fault tree. The analysis includes the determination of system reliability, system unavailability, and importance of subsystem components. Graphs are presented for illustrating the availability and reliability of the subsystems of AHS. The reliability and availability of AHS for conducting safety analysis, risk analysis and cost-benefit analysis can be determined from these graphs. Successful implementation of ITS technologies, to a large extent, will depend on the outcome of the aforementioned analyses.