The Monte-Carlo method without sorting for uncertainty propagation analysis in PRA

The Monte-Carlo method has been widely used for the analysis of an uncertainty propagation in fault tree analysis. The conventional Monte-Carlo method is time-consuming because of the sorting process. In this study, the Monte-Carlo method without sorting is developed by using the segmentation between the sufficient upper bound and the sufficient lower bound of the evaluated top event frequencies into meshes and interpolation within the mesh. It is shown that the results obtained from the new method are almost equivalent to those from the conventional method, and that the new method reduces greatly the computational running time. (author)