Engineering: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

The purpose of the fault and event tree analysis is to enable the engineers to understand the interactions between the various components of a system, and hence to design possible defence-in-depth schemes if appropriate, and therefore reduce the chances of all failures of components (such as a battery) to a level where the total chance of failure i

The basic idea is to try to prevent an accident in the first place with appropriate safety factors but then to limit the progress and consequences if one should occur.

They have discovered that human factors in failure are not just a matter of individuals making slips, lapses, or mistakes, but are also the result of organizational and cultural situations which are not easy to identify in advance or at the time. Indeed, they may only become apparent in hindsight.

Even if the chance of the initial damage is very low, the consequences can be very severe. Such systems lack resilience or robustness. We have to learn to live with the knowledge that we cannot predict the total behaviour of a complex system from the performance of its interdependent parts – we have to expect the unexpected unintended consequences.

The characteristics of each layer emerge from the interacting behaviour of the components working in the layer below.

How do we deal with risk in this complexity of multiple layers of emergent characteristics?

The over-stretched balloon represents an accident waiting to happen.

In other words, energy is the capacity for work in a process and is an accumulation of power over time. During these processes, some of the impedance dissipates energy (resistance), some of it stores potential (capacitance) some of it stores flow (induction). For example, the dissipation or loss of energy through a resistance in an electrical circu

We attempt to detect these hazards by looking for changes in important measurements of performance.

Forensic pathology is the science or the study of the origin, nature, and course of diseases. We can draw a direct analogy between medics monitoring the symptoms of ill health or disease in people with engineers monitoring the symptoms of poor performance or proneness to failure in an engineering system such as a railway network.