Fuzzy fault tree analysis for fire and explosion of crude oil tanks

• Various potential causes of Crude Oil Tank Fire and Explosion (COTFE) are identified.
• A COTFE fault tree is constructed and minimal cut sets of this tree are determined by qualitative analysis.
• A hybrid approach of fuzzy set theory and conventional FTA is proposed to quantify COTFE fault tree in fuzzy environment.
• Importance analysis of COTFE fault tree is performed by proposed method for decision making.

Crude oil tank fire and explosion (COTFE) is the most frequent type of accident in petroleum refineries, oil terminals or storage which often results in human fatality, environment pollution and economic loss. In this paper, with fault tree qualitative analysis technique, various potential causes of the COTFE are identified and a COTFE fault tree is constructed. Conventional fault tree quantitative analysis calculates the occurrence probability of the COTFE using exact probability data of the basic events. However, it is often very difficult to obtain corresponding precise data and information in advance due to insufficient data, changing environment or new components. Fuzzy set theory has been proven to be effective on such uncertain problems. Hence, this article investigates a hybrid approach of fuzzy set theory and fault tree analysis to quantify the COTFE fault tree in fuzzy environment and evaluate the COTFE occurrence probability. Further, importance analysis for the COTFE fault tree, including the Fussell–Vesely importance measure of basic events and the cut sets importance measure, is performed to help identifying the weak links of the crude oil tank system that will provide the most cost-effective mitigation. Also, a case study and analysis is provided to testify the proposed method.