A Modified Model of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Based on Generalized Evidence Theory

Due to the incomplete knowledge, how to handle the uncertain risk factors in failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is still an open issue. This paper proposes a new generalized evidential FMEA (GEFMEA) model to handle the uncertain risk factor, which may not be included in the conventional FMEA model. In GEFMEA, not only the conventional risk factors, the occurrence, severity, and detectability of the failure mode, but also the other incomplete risk factors are taken into consideration. In addition, the relative importance among all these risk factors is well addressed in the proposed method. GEFMEA is based on the generalized evidence theory, which is efficient in handling incomplete information in the open world. The efficiency and some merit of the proposed method are verified by the numerical example and a real case study on aircraft turbine rotor blades.