Fault tree analysis (FTA) has been used in the chemical process industry (CPI) for systematic safety and reliability analysis during the past decades. Conventional manual construction of fault trees can be extremely time consuming and vulnerable to human error. A computer-aided fault tree synthesis methodology can be an initial step, or as an independent check to assist or supplement manual FTA. However, no entirely satisfactory algorithm has been published for fault tree synthesis, especially when control loops are encountered. A potential methodology to construct fault trees automatically is proposed in this paper. This algorithm works directly form the system block diagram, thus avoids the tedious work of generating digraphs, transition tables, decision tables, and knowledge-based rules. Mini cause-and-effect trees are used to model the cause and effect logics around each item of equipment. Control loops are treated by special cause-and-effect unit models - logical combinations of the unit models of their constituent components. Multiple or complex control loops can be easily taken into account by providing their corresponding cause-and-effect unit models. In particular, the fault tree construction algorithm presented here is based on a component-by-component basis instead of a loop-by-loop or node-by-node basis. The tree structure is much more concise and easier to read. An example is embedded in the description of the methodology for better understanding. Analysis shows that the fault tree generated here is equivalent to the published result. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.