System of Systems Hazard Analysis Using HAZOP and FTA for Advanced Quarry Production

Abstract

The advanced production systems are composed of separate and distinct systems that operate in both isolation and conjunction, and therefore forms the System-of-Systems (SoS). However, a lot of production systems are classified as safety-critical, for example, due to the interactions between machines and involved materials. From the safety perspective, besides the behaviour of an individual system in SoS, the emergent behaviour of systems that comes from their individual actions and interactions must be considered. An unplanned event or sequence of events in safety-critical production systems may results in human injury or death, damage to machines or the environment. This paper focuses on the construction equipment domain, particularly the quarry site, which solely produce dimension stone and/or gravel products. The principal contribution of this paper is SoS hazard identification and mitigation/elimination for the electric quarry site for which the combination of guide words based collaborative method Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) are used. The published studies on HAZOP and FTA techniques have not considered the emergent behaviours of different machines. The applicability of particular techniques is demonstrated for individual and emergent behaviours of machines used in the quarry operations, such as autonomous hauler, wheel loader, excavator and crusher.