Evaluating the efforts it takes to shake a system to crash : a simulation study

• Main Author: Lim, Wen Ting
• Other Authors: XIAO Gaoxi
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/140415
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Everyone must go through the life cycle of birth, growth, and death. This universal law, applies not only to living things, but affects systems as well. In this report, the topic of what it takes to collapse such a system will be discussed. The effort here refers to the weightage of nodes being removed at the initialization stage in a complex network. The model adopted in this simulation study is known as a “K-Q cascade” model as implemented by Yi Yu. This model proposes the emergence of a system which is affected by local information such as individual behaviour in the system. In addition, it demonstrates the process of cascading failure of a network. Over the course of this project, the impact of initial damage on the system was studied by conducting numerical simulation which resulted in the aforementioned cascading failure. By using the K-Q cascade model as a cascading failure example, the evolution of a network under different degrees of initial damage was evaluated. In conclusion, the simulation results show that when the system is at the edge of the threshold value, the system is prone to cascading failures. In the simulation, the threshold value is expressed as K-Q threshold value. Therefore, it cannot withstand any initial damage. Furthermore, the system will enter a crash state when the initial damage equals or greater than the q threshold value. The tolerance to initial damage e can be improved by increasing the overall network degree distribution and threshold of nodes required to leave the system before reaching failure. In other words, a more robust system can survive more severe initial damage.