Citation

Xu Q, Xu K, Li L, Yao X. R. Soc. Open Sci. 2018; 5(8): e180397.

Affiliation

Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education on Safe Mining of Deep Metal Mines, School of Resources and Civil Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, People's Republic of China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Royal Society Publishing)

DOI

10.1098/rsos.180397

PMID

30225027

PMCID

PMC6124069

Abstract

Safety assessments are a crucial first step in preventing coal and gas outburst accidents. The main purpose of this study was to create a new accident prevention technique using a novel safety assessment method based on fault tree basic event importance, grey relational analysis and the bow tie model. The innovation of the proposed method lies in generating the composite importance of a basic event from the fundamental importance via grey relational analysis; bow tie analysis serves to reveal the most critical basic event. First, the minimal cut sets and minimal path sets of a coal and gas outburst accident are determined by fault tree analysis. The role of minimal cut and path sets is determined and the coal and gas outburst occurrence frequency is calculated accordingly. Second, the structure, probability, critical and Fussell-Vesely importance ranked basic events differently due to different aspects of the basic events as investigated. We establish a composite importance to represent single basic events and achieved new ranking results by grey relational analysis. Third, the critical basic event low permeability coefficient is analysed via bow tie model and safety measures are defined which prevent the dangerous consequences of a low permeability coefficient. An actual coal and gas outburst accident is used as a case study to test the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Language: en

Keywords

bow tie model; coal and gas outburst; fault tree analysis; grey relational analysis; importance; safety assessment