Trends in the development of system-level fault Dependency matrices

A Dependency matrix (D-matrix) is a consistent and systematic way to capture hierarchical system-level fault diagnostic information. The D-matrix is derived from a dependency modeling framework to capture the causal relationships between failure modes and symptoms. D-matrices are developed from various sources such as historical field failure data, service documents, engineering schematics, and Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) data. Here, we survey the existing research work on developing D-matrices from disparate data sources and data formats. We classify the D-matrices based on their data source and the imperfectness of symptoms for both boolean and real-valued [0,1] D-matrices. An industrial perspective is offered to describe the pros and cons of various types of D-matrices along with the challenges faced while developing and applying them for vehicle health management.