SHyFTA, a Stochastic Hybrid Fault Tree Automaton for the modelling and simulation of Dynamic Reliability problem

Reliability assessment of industrial processes is traditionally performed with RAMS techniques. Such tech-niques are static in nature because they are unable to consider the multi-state operational and failure natureof systems and the dynamic variations of the environment in which they operate.Stochastic Hybrid Automaton appears to overcome this weakness coupling a deterministic and a stochas-tic process and integrating the features of a dynamic system with the concepts of dynamic reliability.At the state of the art, no attempts to enhance a formal RAMS technique with dynamic reliability has beentried, nor a computer-aided tool that plays as expert system has been coded yet.The aim of this paper is to fill this gap with a simulation formalism and a modelling tool able to combinethe Dynamic Fault Tree technique and the Stochastic Hybrid Automaton within the Simulink environment.To this aim the MatCarloRE toolbox was adapted to interact with a Simulink dynamic system. The resultingassembly represents an important step ahead for the delivering of a user-friendly computer-aided tool for thedynamic reliability.