Domino effect in chemical process industries triggered by overpressure-Formulation of equipment-specific probits

The use of probits is essential for the study of domino effect in chemical process industries, to enable the assessment of the probability of escalation of accidents. This paper reports a more comprehensive and reliable method for formulating the probits than has been accomplished by the earlier reported methods. It is based on a larger data set, a finer level of classification of the equipment and a different method of linking the qualitative description of the damage to the quantitative probability. The probits thus obtained have significantly higher coefficients of determination (R2) than those obtained by the previous authors, indicating a much better interpretation of the past data for calculating the probits. In most cases, the R2 was greater than 0.9.